Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES It’s unclear what the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which had governed Gaza under a precarious truce with Israel, hoped to achieve with its coordinated attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Were they hoping to stoke a smoldering internal crisis in Israel’s leadership? Were they seeking to ignite another Arab-Israeli war? Or was their goal simply to … Read more
When, against all expectations, Rodrigo Duterte won the presidential elections in 2016, people wondered how long the former Davao mayor could maintain the sudden surge in popularity that had propelled him to the nation’s highest office. His parochial experience as the autocratic political boss of a Mindanao city barely prepared him for the immensely complex … Read more
Whether intended or not, the ongoing hearings in both houses of Congress are doing exactly what a special truth commission on the abuses committed under the Duterte regime would have set out to do if such a body had been created by law. Right now, these hearings may go on indefinitely, at great expense and … Read more
Like many who believe that what happens in American politics today is bound to have a great impact not just on America but on the rest of the world, I listened intently to the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last Sept. 10. What I found remarkable was not the debate itself but … Read more
So many things are happening in the political scene that it has become increasingly difficult to connect the dots. But it’s quite obvious that, a few months after the breakup of the Marcos-Duterte political partnership, it is now open season on the key figures associated with the past administration. So far, the investigations and inquiries … Read more
Not a few were startled when Vice President Sara Duterte suddenly accused Sen. Risa Hontiveros of “politicizing” the budget deliberation at the Senate hearing of the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) 2025 budget. Hontiveros, one of only two opposition senators in the 24-member upper chamber, was asking for clarification of the allocation for certain … Read more
Forty-one years have passed since former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was brazenly murdered at the Manila International Airport on the day of his return from exile in the United States. An entire generation of Filipinos has little memory of that event. To them, the public holiday that is meant to provide Filipinos the occasion … Read more
Not many are aware of it, except maybe for some well-informed election lawyers and their moneyed clients. Per the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) recent admission, “premature campaigning” is no longer an election offense. One landmark Supreme Court ruling (Lanot v. Comelec), lucidly penned by former associate justice Antonio Carpio, found its way into the 2007 … Read more
The politicization of the justice system and of law enforcement itself was never more blatant than during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. His bloody war on drugs enabled him to impose his will on the whole government as well as to intimidate the rest of society. By exploiting people’s fear of being tagged as a … Read more
At various points during the July 25 televised presidential briefing on the disaster situation created by Supertyphoon “Carina” (International name: Gaemi) in conjunction with the southwest monsoon, President Marcos expressed his frustration over the type of information he was getting from the different government agencies in attendance. The President and his officials were clearly not … Read more