Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES There is one place at least in the country where 11-year-old girls are not being groomed to become “guest relations officers” or GROs for DOMs and pedophiles. It’s softball they are being bred for, and the place is called Pulungmasle, a farming village in the periphery of the town of Guagua, province of Pampanga. Hardly … Read more
A long time ago, people who cleared the land and made it productive regarded themselves as its stewards if not its owners. Then, government came and declared all land that has not been properly titled as public domain. Thus, overnight, with the exception of a few who knew the rudiments of land registration, the natives … Read more
Twenty four years ago, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and proceeded to govern the country without accountability – except, maybe, to history. Today, we remember that sad episode in our national lives as a metaphor for everything that is corrupt, abusive, and predatory in politics. The story could have been different. Martial law could have … Read more
The creation of the SPCPD or the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development may be described as the last attempt of the state to formally integrate Moroland into the Filipino nation. If it succeeds, those Moro checkpoints — which designate the boundaries of contested territory and which stand as the last emblems of Moro … Read more
In her speech at the Ateneo University recently, former president Cory Aquino enumerated what she believed to be the qualities of an ideal leader for our times. She said that he or she “must have a sense of right and wrong, of morality and justice, and a sense of kinship with all of our people.” … Read more
The first thing that my daughter wrote to her sisters while visiting Mexico early this year was how many Edu Manzano and Dayanara Torres look-alikes she had seen everywhere. Even the taxi-driver looked like Aga Muhlach, she gushed. And a woman behind the counter at a shopping mall could have been Charlene Gonzalez. The young … Read more
ABS-CBN’s The Inside Story showed an episode on Filipino dog eaters last Tuesday which left me wondering exactly why watching it became for my family such an offensive experience. My children, typically liberal and modern, are not normally squeamish about these things. But this time they were screaming. The camera shows a light brown native … Read more
The Davao City prosecutor’s office has dismissed the rape complaint of Karen Vertido, executive director of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, against businessman Jose Custodio, a former president of the same organization. The vote of the special panel of four fiscals who conducted the preliminary investigation was tied, 2-2, but Joel Hipe, … Read more
We thank Sarah for choosing to defend herself and suffer imprisonment rather than silently accept the degradation of being raped by her employer. We are grateful to Mansueto for showing that the Filipino is not just a spectator in the Olympics but can also win medals despite the absence of meaningful support for national athletes. … Read more
The rhetoric of the Olympics may be about world peace and unity, but its everyday language is all about winning and superiority. Russia leads for the moment not because it has the most number of medals (the US does), but because it has more of the gold. The games are cruel in this sense. They … Read more