In her 2005 State of the Nation Address, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo spoke of two nations – one experiencing vibrant economic growth, and another mired in endless political bickering. The political system, she said, must be reformed in order to ensure the economy’s unimpeded growth. The vehicle for this is the shift to a federal parliamentary government … Read more
In the debate surrounding the proposal to create a “Truth Commission,” no one has raised the basic question: Who wants the truth and why? It is Ms Arroyo who is commissioning the truth, and we all know why – she wants affirmation of her victory in 2004, nothing more. If we wanted to know who … Read more
The so-called “X-tape”, that Ilocos Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson has brought to the public’s attention, which supposedly implicates former president Joseph “Erap” Estrada in a plot to assassinate President Arroyo, seems so patently fabricated he cannot possibly think people would swallow it. Its real intent must lie elsewhere. My view is that the Chavit tape … Read more
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has set back the political growth of our country by at least twenty years as a result of her single-minded pursuit of personal power. She has re-injected into our nation’s governance a mode of rule that perniciously privatizes state power. Like a small town politico who has mastered the rhythms of the patron-client … Read more
Deconstruction is a form of destabilization, but I assure the Department of Justice that the only things it destabilizes are the meanings of statements, scripts, texts, and documents. A method popularized by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, “deconstruction accounts for how a text’s explicit formulations undermine its implicit or non-explicit aspects. It brings out what … Read more