Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES The population problem has many sides to it, and often various issues are mixed together in one emotional brew, preventing reasoned discussion. Debate highlights the disagreements while ignoring the many points of a possible consensus. Does our country have a population problem? There are at least three ways of viewing this problem. In its most … Read more
The strong state that Ferdinand Marcos built in 1972 became so wholly associated with human rights violation and massive corruption that when we got rid of it in 1986, we resolved never again to concentrate political power in any single branch of government. In reaction, we found ourselves swinging to the opposite model of a … Read more
Sometime during the Christmas holidays, 21-year-old Onak asked me if I needed someone to look after the little orchard I was starting at the foot of Mt. Malasimbo in Bataan. I remembered him as a sprightly teenager who helped around in my brother’s garden. Slightly deaf because of chronic ear infection, he had quit school … Read more
Finish them off, or give them back their land. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile may have uttered this sentiment in exasperation over the Arroyo government’s lack of a clear policy on Mindanao. But he should know Mindanao, having played a key role in the Marcos regime’s handling of its problems. He also has business interests in … Read more
It is perhaps symbolic of the perennial tension between the natural forces of life and the attempts to regulate life in the world that a day set aside for erotic love should be named after a Christian saint. The coincidence is not exceptional. Many holidays in the Christian calendar have pagan origins. Sometimes the pagan … Read more
We all know there is something very wrong in the education of our children. Where the trouble lies and how we should repair it have been the subject of recurrent debate. Recently, a group of professors and researchers in education from the University of the Philippines offered their thoughts on this question in a position … Read more
In general, no tax is ever acceptable to a people. This is even more so if the government that collects it is perceived to be useless, illegitimate, and corrupt. A good government is one that is able to show the public that the taxes it demands are collected justly – i.e., according to one’s earnings … Read more
If the participants of Edsa 1 and Edsa 2 were to be asked today if they would join another people power uprising, they would likely say no. They would say that people power promises many things but delivers nothing. That it substitutes the shortcut of a political surgery for the long painstaking task of building … Read more
The word has crept in quietly in recent discussions of administrative and fiscal reform. If taken seriously, it could spell the beginning of political modernity in our country. The vigor with which it is being opposed is an indicator of the staying power of obsolete interests. It shows us that corruption in our society is … Read more
There are many ways of classifying leaders. One way I find particular useful to our current situation in the Philippines is based on a scheme developed by the American sociologist Amitai Etzioni. He differentiates leaders by the type of power they use and the kind of compliance they elicit from those they govern. He says … Read more