Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

At a recent forum on leadership, I listened intently as a group of young, reform-minded local government executives shared their experiences of the hard work of governance reform. Their recurring problem, in essence, was how to get people to trust institutions instead of always looking for a connection to bring their needs to the attention … Read more

August and September stand out in our political calendar as moments signifying upheaval and transition. On Aug. 21, 1971, the bombing of the Liberal Party rally at Plaza Miranda prompted then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, a prelude to the declaration of martial law in September … Read more

A couple of years ago, during my daily walk around the University of the Philippines oval, I felt thirsty and realized I had no money with me. My granddaughter Julia, who was walking with me, said I could pay with my phone. “You have GCash, don’t you, Lolo?” I did, but a bottle of water … Read more

The 1987 Constitution (Article XI, Section 3[6]) states that in impeachment cases, “No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.” Who would have thought, when the Constitution was submitted for ratification, that it would one day be necessary to clarify what “all the Members of the … Read more

Were it not for the fact that Sept. 21 is a date in the calendar, and that there are Filipinos still alive who recall what it came to signify in 1972, I am fairly certain this day would not merit a pause in our daily lives. I am of that generation. I still remember the … Read more

In November 2001, the late Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena was indefinitely suspended by the Supreme Court and fined P20,000 for gross negligence of duty. Of 198 cases raffled to his division, 138 had long been submitted for decision. He was given six months to clear the backlog, which included the Marcos cases. Garchitorena, a … Read more

The Kansai International Airport (KIX) in Japan opened in 1994 on an artificial island in Osaka Bay; it now sits on two. The seabed there lies 18 meters down, under rock and soil dumped from three nearby mountains, over a soft layer of Holocene clay that was drained through millions of sand drains. Under the … Read more

Can Nature talk? If it could, what might it be telling us? Such talk may reveal less about Nature’s meanings than about the helplessness we feel in the face of extreme weather, flash floods, landslides, storm surges, glacier collapse. We may have learned to talk to machines, but we have yet to find a way … Read more

Barely a week has passed since the shooting at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University (AdZU) junior high school. Yet one can hardly keep up with the flurry of blame-casting and mandatory preventive measures that has followed. A straight line has been drawn from Ateneo to the Tacloban school shooting two months ago and, by extension, … Read more

The P92.8-million flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan, for which former Sen. Bong Revilla is now on trial, was inserted into the national budget through an errata. In his 2025 State of the Nation Address (Sona), President Marcos named the method from the podium: “Mga kickback, mga initiative, errata, SOP, for the boys.” “Leadership fund” … Read more