Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES In the morning of Aug. 23, 2010, as then President Benigno Aquino III began his 55th day in office, a dismissed Manila policeman in uniform took control of a tourist bus filled with visitors from Hong Kong. Holding the terrified passengers at gunpoint at a parking bay in Luneta Park, Rolando Mendoza claimed he had … Read more
Thrown into the larger social world outside the comfort zone of family, friends, and local community, we are torn, in Steven Pinker’s words, “between the desire to fit in and the desire to be unique” (Pinker, “The Stuff of Thought,” 2007). Nowhere is this more observable than when a new head of state enters the … Read more
Showing at some local cinemas since last week—and I hope it’s not pulled out soon for lack of viewers—is the historical movie “Ang Hapis at Himagsik ni Hermano Puli.” Competently directed by Gil Portes and with Aljur Abrenica in the lead role, the film depicts the “agony and fury” of Apolinario de la Cruz (aka … Read more
When President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte met Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at the recent Asean Summit in Laos, they evidently took an instant liking for one another. Sharing a reputation for decisiveness, both basked in the same populist adulation that has become the hallmark of weak democracies. But, more than this, they projected the same … Read more
In everyday life, we tend to assign less weight to oral speech than to the written word. The spoken is presumed to be “ephemeral,” liable to be misheard, reinterpreted, or denied. The written word, in contrast, is thought to be “indelible,” its meaning cast in stone. But, the literary scholar Roland Barthes, in his classic … Read more
There’s one topic on which President Duterte has admitted censoring his normally uninhibited language: China. “I’m sure, as your President,” he told his audience the other day at the inauguration of the new Davao International Container Port, “I would not lead you to trouble, or I would not cause you shame. There will be a … Read more
ULAANBAATAR—Invited to participate in a forum in Mongolia this last week of August, I instantly said yes, motivated mainly by a wish to experience what it is like to stand on the main capital square of this vast landlocked Asian country, sometimes called the Land of the Eternal Blue Sky. Known for its cloudless skies, … Read more
In its first 50 days in office, the Duterte presidency has explicitly identified two targets for destruction. The first: the drug lords and their henchmen and protectors; the other, the oligarchs. The war against these two declared enemies is as complex as it can be. It generates new problems that the government may not be … Read more
We should have seen it coming when, after then President Fidel V. Ramos allowed the dictator’s remains to be repatriated and buried in the Ilocos in 1993, the Marcos family announced that the Marcos Museum and Mausoleum in Batac, Ilocos Norte, would be but a provisional resting place for the former president. Insisting that this … Read more
Scan the Constitution and you will find the concept of human rights at the center of that expansive document—a veritable fixed compass that orients citizens to the limits of governmental power. When it was ratified, no one asked if these rights are inherent in all human beings, or whether, for example, criminals can be considered … Read more