Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES President Estrada was right to have a view on Mahathir’s style of governance and to express it as a personal opinion. But it would be wrong for him to snub the Kuala Lumpur Apec summit as a way of protesting the detention of his “good friend” Anwar, the former deputy prime minister. It is certainly … Read more
Watching Malaysia’s Mahathir dismiss and jail Anwar Ibrahim, his intended successor until a few weeks ago, brings me back to 1983. Anwar’s ouster is the equivalent of Ninoy’s assassination. It took three years after Ninoy’s death for the middle class in the Philippines to realize what was happening and to decide what they were capable … Read more
“Suppose we want truth,” writes Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, “why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?” Philosophers have concerned themselves basically with two sorts of issues: the truth about the world and the conditions by which the truth can be known. Nietzsche says they presume the value of truth. “There is no … Read more
A visit to Muntinlupa the other day in connection with a TV documentary I am doing on prison life turned into a review of the screaming headlines of the past decade. Like the “public morality lesson” that punishment was meant to be in the Classical Age, the New Bilibid Prison became for me a book … Read more
When a person marries for romantic love, that’s modern. When children marry the individuals chosen for them by their parents, that’s traditional or premodern. But when two people, total strangers to one another, get married after being paired by a radio program, we say that’s probably postmodern. A couple in Sydney, Australia did just that … Read more
On a visit to Jolo not too long ago, I sat in a huge social hall with then newly-elected ARMM Governor Nur Misuari as he attended to the crowd that had stayed up all night waiting to see him. There must have been about a thousand people in that rundown building that served as his … Read more
The death of UP student Alex Icasiano from severe hazing by members of the Alpha Phi Beta fraternity has once more focused attention on the violence that seems to inhere in the culture of fraternities. The violence comes in the form of brutal initiation rites and murderous rumbles so contradictory to the values of brotherhood … Read more
My friend, the writer Andres Cristobal Cruz, recently gifted me with copies of a priceless translation of Noli Me Tangere in Kapampangan. “One for yourself,” he said in his note, “and one each for your two brothers, the priest and the politician.” The book, a project of the Commission for the Rizal Centenary during the … Read more
The Visiting Forces Agreement or VFA is nothing more than a litany of the norms we must observe when American military forces come to visit our country. The VFA presumes that these visits will bring mutual benefits to both our countries. It does not specify what these benefits are, or what is to be gained … Read more
The recent celebration of our National Centennial, everyone agrees, was a great party. But it is an open question whether it left us with a better understanding of ourselves as a people or a clearer idea of how we should approach the problems that confront us today as a nation. We Filipinos often complain that … Read more