Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

The term has been used so loosely that it has become synonymous, at best, with what we used to call “cause-oriented groups,” and, at worst, with unelected meddlers and hecklers without any real political base.  In fact, the term “civil society” has solid credentials, and it is useful to go back to its early usage … Read more

She clashed with her Foreign Secretary, Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr. on the basic issue of American troops in Mindanao. Because of this, she said, she was accepting his resignation. Everyone knows she was really sacking him, and in a rather shabby way too. The other day, asserting her role as “chief architect” of the … Read more

The eroticism of risk is the essence of gambling.  We all take risks – with our health, our money, our reputations, and sometimes even with our sanity.  The question is whether, and to what extent, we want the State to protect us from our folly.  That is one issue. The other issue has to do … Read more

What amazes us, modern city-dwellers, is why anyone in this day and age would want to join, and die for, anything like the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association, Inc. (PBMA).  We take one look at its banefully unattractive leader, Ruben Ecleo, Jr., and our amazement grows even more.  For we have learned to expect that such … Read more

Defenseless before death, but still armed with the logical and moral clarity of one who had studied the law all his life, my ailing father wrote his long dead father a letter. He was doing it, he said in the letter, not to disturb his soul, which deserved its peace, but to make a clean … Read more

Coming in the wake of a bungled hostage situation in Pasay City, the death of Martin Burnham and Ediborah Yap, two of the last three hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf, during a rescue operation will likely provoke mocking comparisons between Pasay policemen and Army Rangers. It is the worst time for such tragedies to … Read more

The year was 1986.  A new government had come to power following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship through a peaceful revolution. So many lives had been lost or destroyed, and so much public wealth wasted and stolen, in the preceding dark years. The time for reckoning and settling scores had finally come. One of … Read more

This is not paradise. “It is the island of your imagination,” says Gov. Pedro “Loloy” Romualdo rather poetically. With its colonial ruins, turnof-the-century homes, rustic coastal villages, awesome sunrises and sunsets, and varied geological formations, Camiguin is definitely imaginable as the setting for many a magical-realist novel or historical film. But, on my first visit … Read more

How much responsibility should we take for our individual actions? How much responsibility should we assume for the actions of our children?  How much responsibility should we bear for the kind of society we have?  Or for the kind of world we have? All over the world thoughtful people are asking these questions, especially as … Read more

We would all be psychopaths without our mothers.  We would be insensitive individuals driven by raw desire, completely oblivious of the needs and pain of others, and requiring constant social restraint. We first begin to think beyond self-interest from our mothers’ example of selflessness.  We learn kindness, generosity, and sacrifice from seeing what these women … Read more