Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

What’s wrong with having a father and son (Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and candidate Jack Ponce Enrile), or a brother and sister (Senators Alan Peter and Pia Cayetano), or two brothers (Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and candidate JV Ejercito) sitting together as senators in a 24-member chamber? What’s wrong with having the wife succeed her husband … Read more

On the front page of the Inquirer yesterday, there is a fascinating photograph of the main personalities who came to the launch of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s memoirs. This picture is worth a thousand words. It shows four seated figures: Imelda Marcos, Cristina Ponce Enrile, Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE), and Benigno S. Aquino III … Read more

Universities in the modern world have been able to host some of the most pathbreaking advances in knowledge by providing an environment in which independent thinkers may pursue intellectual work without fear.  But developing this capacity is not the easiest thing in the world. Universities need enormous amounts of resources that cannot be met by … Read more

Martial law aimed to wipe out the communist insurgency, but ironically it turned into the single most important recruitment tool of the communist movement. How did this happen? The first arrests that were carried out just after midnight of Sept. 23, 1972, targeted high-profile figures from the legal opposition, the press, the academe, and the … Read more

A few days ago, I participated in a forum to explore the purpose and methodology of establishing a “museum of memory” that would contain and preserve memories from the dark period of martial law. The concept behind this is prompted by the strong feeling that today’s young people hardly have an idea of what happened … Read more

AS we get older, we realize we begin to look more and more like our parents. This recognition comes to us in a flash, and usually we pay it no heed. In ironic resignation, we accept the annoying mannerisms, the volatile temper, and even the illnesses as part of the genetic package that our ancestors … Read more

Before it became wholly associated with the suicide terrorist attacks against the United States, Sept. 11 used to be remembered as the day Salvador Allende, Chile’s first elected Marxist president, was killed in the course of the military coup that installed the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.  That tragic event started the reversal of … Read more

Like many government employees with fixed incomes and meager savings, my wife Karina and I have worried about not being able to help our children when they start searching for a permanent home of their own. Our situation is not very different from that of lower-middle-class employees in the private sector who hope to own … Read more

In a democracy, the religion, or lack of it, of Supreme Court justices (or any judge, for that matter) is expected to carry no weight in the discharge of their official functions. What the public cares about is that their decisions are founded on a sound appreciation of the facts and of the applicable laws. … Read more

Recently,  I listened to a friend recount his “stem cell treatment” at a medical spa in Europe.  The treatment costs about P1 million.  The clinic where it is done has lately been attracting hundreds of Filipinos in search of the modern version of the proverbial fountain of youth. “You’re fetched from the airport by a … Read more