Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES 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
When the prosecution opened its case against Vice President Sara Duterte, I found it interesting that it did not follow the original order of the articles of impeachment. It began at the end. Article IV—the threat against the life of the President, his wife, and the then Speaker of the House—was presented first. Captured on … Read more
We often hear educated Filipinos blame the kind of government we have on the kind of public officials that the “bobotantes” choose during elections. The derisive term is a clever blending of two words: “bobo,” meaning stupid, and “botante,” meaning voter. It is applied to voters whose electoral choices are presumably uninformed by any understanding … Read more
When Pulse Asia released its latest Ulat ng Bayan this July, one could almost anticipate the following day’s headlines: Vice President Sara Duterte leads the 2028 presidential race at 49 percent. That’s a horse-race reading, inviting the reader to see if her ongoing impeachment trial would affect her viability as a presidential candidate. It is … Read more
The past six days of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial have produced familiar frustration. The proceedings seem bogged down in objections, repetitive, and distant from the only question that needs to be answered: Is she fit to hold office? Some advocacy groups and commentators have called on the Senate to move faster, to focus … Read more
It is fascinating how “impeach,” an almost archaic word, has become part of our everyday vocabulary. Quite often, we use it to mean removal from office, as in: “Former Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached.” At other times, it simply means to formally accuse a high official, as in: “This is the second time Vice … Read more
The United States and the Philippines once shared July 4 as a date of supreme significance—a founding day from which sovereign nationhood was said to begin. Yet the day never meant the same thing to both. Not simply because one people declared independence from another nation while the other was cast as beneficiary of a … Read more
All the moves at the Senate these past two weeks by the political figures identified with the Dutertes are designed to thwart one thing: the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. This is the broader context of the ongoing battle for control of the Senate leadership and its key committees. The importance of that … Read more