Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

A few years ago, when the threat from COVID-19 had begun to recede, more and more elderly people reported being victimized by scams. The pandemic and the need for connection it accentuated had led many of them, for the first time, to experience the advantages of the mobile phone and the internet. But this new … Read more

In January 2023, less than a year after assuming the presidency, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. signaled his administration’s decisive pivot to America by announcing that the United States would be given access to four additional military sites on Philippine territory. This was a marked departure not only from his predecessor’s China-leaning posture, but also from … Read more

Protest movements worldwide tend to come in waves. Much of this results from the emulation of activism seen elsewhere, a tendency heightened by global media and the ubiquity of online platforms. Yet, like development models, protest movements are not portable. Conditions that make them plausible or even necessary in one society may be absent in … Read more

Today, Nov. 30, as outraged citizens once more pour into the streets to express their indignation over the Marcos administration’s failure to halt the massive looting of public funds, two calls seem to confront them. The first is for the outright removal of the present leadership, whether by forcing it to step down or to … Read more

When one or two families dominate politics, it is not only democracy that weakens. Family life itself begins to fray. We are seeing this today in the very public and increasingly ugly conflict between President Marcos Jr.’s family and his elder sister, Sen. Imee Marcos. At last week’s Iglesia ni Cristo prayer rally in Luneta, … Read more

A movement calling itself the United People’s Initiative is mobilizing for a three-day mass action beginning today, Sunday, Nov. 16. Billed as a “Rally para sa pananagutan, katarungan, at katapatan,” the gatherings at the Edsa People Power Monument and Luneta are, by the organizers’ announcement, to be spearheaded by the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), Jesus … Read more

The opposite of anger is not apathy. It is moral numbness—the deadening of our capacity to respond to harm because nothing we do seems to matter in the end. It is the quiet surrender that is premised on the belief that time will heal everything. It is to prevent the onset of this numbness that … Read more

In Tibetan Buddhism, bardo refers to the in-between state after death and before rebirth. It is a time when consciousness is less fixed, open to both change and confusion. A being may linger there for a while, seemingly suspended between clarity and ignorance. It is a period of danger and opportunity. This image seems apt … Read more

There is one thing the past has taught us about law and politics in our country. When politicians face criminal charges, they often seek absolution not in the courts but in elections. Thus, politics takes precedence over the law, and electoral victory becomes a substitute for accountability. It is what happens when institutions are weak. … Read more

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” wrote the Czech novelist Milan Kundera. Forgetting has always been one of our nation’s gravest afflictions. We forget the abuses and excesses of power even when their traces still haunt our daily lives. We keep electing the same bad leaders, conveniently overlooking … Read more