Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

It is very difficult to characterize the Malaysian government’s recent action against Filipinos living in Sabah.  The cruelty is astounding. One can only call it “nationalist fundamentalism” – the belief in national identity, in this case Malaysian, as a source of rights, to the exclusion of all other human affinities.  If the situation had been … Read more

Almost everyone recognizes the right to vote of all qualified Filipinos residing abroad.  The 1987 Constitution explicitly instructs Congress to pass a law that will make absentee voting possible.  Sixty-four bills have been filed to give flesh to the constitution’s mandate, and five successive congresses have intermittently debated its provisions. Yet for the last fifteen … Read more

We often hear it said that what we lack as a nation is “political will.” The term varies in meaning depending on the context in which it is used. Sometimes it simply means clarity of purpose, and therefore a lack of political will means a failure to focus on essential problems.  Most of the time, … Read more

The president has explained why she is taking the initiative of personally presenting criminal suspects to the media.  By her presence, she says, the apprehension of criminals is given the widest media projection. There are three reasons why this is being done, says the president. The first is to teach criminals a lesson by exposing … Read more

The meaning of a word is never fixed, philosophers tell us.  Even dictionaries offer alternative meanings.  We thus look for a word’s meaning in the context of its use.  There we find that meanings constantly shift, expressing images, but also suppressing others. That is why texts are full of tension. In the past few days, … Read more

Some say that we should not take State of the Nation Addresses (Sonas) too seriously; they are just words.  That we should look instead at the actual impact of government on the lives of the governed.  Are the masses less hungry?  Do they have jobs?  Are they more hopeful about the future? That is a … Read more

I did not think it was serious until my own children began to talk about it as an idea whose time has come.  Many years ago, at the peak of the Marcos years, we were presented with a chance to live abroad, but my family scoffed at the idea.  The other day, one of my … Read more

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