Representatives of Smartmatic met with the future first lady before the May 9, 2022, presidential election, violating their contract as the automated election system (AES) provider for the Commission on Elections (Comelec), according to a motion to disqualify the company from involvement in the 2025 polls. The submission to the Comelec on Sept. 11 is...
Tag: Marcos
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Timely remembrance of martial law off the press
Ultimately, they write to remember, and to fight: to remember the terror of martial law and its lingering impact on the lives of Filipinos, and to fight the foisted narrative that those terrible years comprised a “golden age.” This avowed mission runs relentlessly through “Serve,” a book of stories by and interviews with former members...
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The Marcos restoration (but have they ever left?)
The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) launched its 16th book, “The Marcos Restoration: The CenPEG Papers on Election 2022,” last Oct. 19 at the University of the Philippines Diliman. The book, a compilation of policy analyses over a 17-month period from January 2021 to May 2022, and with Temario C. Rivera and Bobby...
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Martial law and the urgency of remembering
In the morning of Sept. 23, 1972 (Philippines), Edel shook me awake, his face looming above mine and his voice murmuring my name while I got my bearings. The radio’s dead, he said finally. I lurched out of bed, confirming in his eyes what we sensed the night before, when a colleague abruptly left a...
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The dubious legacy of the Marcos debt
As the nation marks the 50th year of the declaration of martial law on Sept. 21, 1972, it is relevant to recall how that chapter in Philippine history has affected the country and its people. Three months after the ouster of the Marcos regime in February 1986, a group of 16 economists from the University...
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Impunity may become institutionalized gov’t policy
In seeking to quash the inquiry of the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the Philippines’ “war on drugs,” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. may be institutionalizing impunity for the systematic mass violence under his predecessor. “Impunity” occurs if perpetrators of human rights violations and other crimes are able to avoid any procedure that can lead to...
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‘Project Gunita’: safekeeping pages of the Marcos regime’s history
On the night of Election Day on May 9, when Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was on the way to winning the presidential race according to the count of the Commission on Elections, one thought came into my mind: the martial law files. Why? Simple. He is the son and namesake of the ousted dictator Ferdinand E....
