A country’s institutions are strong when they are able to maintain their autonomy against pressures that seek to alter their standard operating procedures in order to accommodate the interests of powerful actors. The key word here is autonomy or independence. The recent arrest of the 38-year-old son of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla on … Read more
Unable to hear anything substantial from him about his plans and priorities during the campaign, the nation couldn’t quite tell what kind of leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr. intended to be if he became president. One hundred days after he assumed the presidency, the public now knows a little, still not enough, about the man 31 … Read more
The term “Pogos,” as we know, refers to Philippine offshore gaming operators. These are foreign-owned and capitalized enterprises that run online gaming operations beamed to the global market using Philippine-based service providers. Because their transactions are almost entirely conducted in Mandarin, it is generally assumed that their target clientele is gamblers from the Chinese mainland … Read more
When Ferdinand Marcos Sr. placed the country under martial law in September 1972, the United States government said nothing critical of the blatant cancellation of democracy in their former colony. Marcos Sr. continued to be regarded, throughout martial law, as a trusted friend and ally of the US in this part of the world. Among … Read more
After he issued Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law, Ferdinand Marcos tried to explain that martial law did not mean military rule. He assured the nation that civilian leadership remained supreme over the military. Technically, he was right. Marcos, who remained president, and Juan Ponce Enrile, who was designated martial law … Read more
The first Elizabeth, who died just the other day after a 70-year reign, was, of course, the Queen of the United Kingdom. The second Elizabeth is new British Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose full name is Mary Elizabeth Truss. The late British monarch’s final performance of her official function as constitutional head of state was … Read more
We who were born in the age of passbooks and real bank tellers will never feel at home in the world of digital banking and automated teller machines (ATMs). This is not a Luddite resistance to all labor-saving machinery. It proceeds rather from a general insecurity we feel when navigating the virtual space created by … Read more
Heroes are exemplary individuals who embody a community’s highest values and ideals. “Heroes” and “nation” typically go together because a country’s best-known heroes are those whose lives are intertwined with the nation’s emergence, emancipation, and transformation. Without any doubt, the Filipino people’s two greatest heroes are Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. Rizal, for offering through … Read more
Thirty-nine years ago, the opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. ended his three-year exile in the United States by coming home. Aware that a death sentence earlier issued against him by a military tribunal could still be enforced, he expected to be arrested upon his arrival in Manila. A dozen government security forces boarded his … Read more
I went to a public elementary school in Pampanga in the 1950s. As I recall, the language that all my early grade teachers used was Kapampangan. My classmates and I learned how to read and write in English and Pilipino, the term used for the national language in those years, from teachers who freely used … Read more