Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

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

The government of the day—the administration of President Marcos Jr. and Congress—is not the entire state. Its failures may expose flaws in the Constitution, but they do not necessarily undermine the viability of the constitutional state itself. It is worth keeping this distinction in mind amid the growing calls questioning the Marcos government’s capacity to … Read more

The magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Bogo City, Cebu, a few days ago reminds us of the fragility of human-made structures when tested by nature’s force. Age-old churches, modern malls—everything can collapse in seconds. We are taught, again and again, that while disasters may be natural in origin, their consequences are largely shaped by the society … Read more

The nation may appear politically, economically, and culturally divided. But on one thing there seems to be agreement: the people are angry—very angry. They feel betrayed by their government. They look at their leaders’ possessions and lifestyles, then look at their own. The difference is so stark that they cannot be blamed for thinking that … Read more

Fifty-three years ago, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., seizing upon a little-known provision of the 1935 Constitution, placed the entire country under martial law. He justified it as the only way to save the republic from a supposed leftist-rightist conspiracy. But it soon became clear that the threat was only a pretext. Marcos used the emergency powers … Read more