In mature democracies, the majority governs and the minority opposes. This is how the political system serves the larger society. The majority forms the government, and the minority shadows it. In this manner are issues clarified, and collectively-binding decisions made. The principal actors in this process are political parties, not individual politicians. Parties are presumed … Read more
Posted on YouTube last July 26 are video clips from a United States Congressional hearing on the controversies spawned by the $600 million US Embassy construction in Baghdad. Two of the testimonies refer to the circumstances under which Filipino workers were brought into the work site by their employer, the First Kuwaiti Company, and the … Read more
A State of the Nation Address (Sona) is interesting not only for what it says but also for what it does not say. The nation hears not only the speech but also its silences. Every Sona reveals a president’s way of seeing, and there is no way of excusing its blind spots by referring to … Read more
Philippine administrations love to anchor their legitimacy on the total demonization of a past regime. They see nothing worth pursuing in their predecessor’s policies and programs, finding them corrupt to the core, and preferring to dismantle everything. Our political system seems to thrive on an ethic of discontinuity. We have, for instance, succeeded in depicting … Read more
One of the most difficult problems we face today as a modernizing society is how to strengthen the division of labor among our various institutions. The traditional way is to assign to key institutions the power to speak for and trump the others. The modern way is to keep these institutions apart so they do … Read more
Some days are sacred to individuals, couples, families, nations, and religious communities. We call them holidays. On such days, people pause to summon memory, and to bask in the mixed sentiments it evokes. They may be sentiments from a deprived or happy childhood, a shared life, a heroic and difficult struggle, or a recurring promise … Read more
Tissue sometimes grows in areas where it is not supposed to be, drawing life from the same system that sustains the healthy cells of the body. Many such growths are harmless. But some are malignant: they graft themselves onto healthy organs, destroying these in the process. The aggressive ones “metastasize” or travel to other parts, … Read more
If we continue to hold elections the way the Commission on Elections held them in 2004 and 2007, it won’t be long before we begin to believe that all elections are nothing but optical illusions. They look real, we experience them as real – but they are all really a mirage, a perception made possible … Read more
Richard Rorty, an unusual American philosopher who rebelled against his own discipline, died last week. He was possibly the most important thinker of his generation. While most of his colleagues in philosophy departments chose to ignore the challenge of European postmodernism, Rorty responded to it by finding a home for many of its themes in … Read more
Her candidates may have been clobbered in the senatorial race by the opposition and her most strident critics, but Gloria Macapagal Arroyo knows better than to complain. The defeat of her candidates strengthens the system over which she presides, and effectively removes the issue of her own contested legitimacy from the national agenda. Despite the … Read more