There are many reasons for the growing clamor to reduce the VAT on oil products. But the two most important are: first, because the VAT on fuel rises with every increase in the price of oil, the public sees it as an infinite burden; and second, because the utilization of the windfall revenue from the … Read more

On the eve of her 8th State of the Nation Address (Sona), the polling firm, Pulse Asia, sought to quantify the public attitude toward President Arroyo’s speeches before the joint session of Congress. Only 13% of the 1,200 randomly selected informants said that Ms Arroyo’s previous Sonas were “truthful,” while 40% believed they were “not … Read more

This fascinating phrase comes from the book of Frantz Fanon, “Black Skin White Masks.”  Fanon, the black psychiatrist from Martinique, and author of the classic “The Wretched of the Earth,” diagnoses the neurosis of wanting-to-be-white as a product of the internalization of colonial subjugation.  “If there is an inferiority complex,” Fanon writes, “it is the … Read more

When Romulo Neri’s appointment as Administrator of the Social Security System was reported in the early evening news, our house help, who was watching, exploded and let loose a torrent of untranslatable expletives. “Ayy p___, pera namin yan ah!” she shouted.  More than the reality of rising prices, what flashed in her mind was the … Read more

At the end of their brief June 24th meeting at the White House, US President George W. Bush and his visitor from the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, faced the press for a photo opportunity.  President Arroyo arrived in the US at around the same a powerful typhoon was battering her country, and a Filipino … Read more

In all the years I have traveled, I have taken planes far more often than I have taken boats.  Yet, I have always believed that boats are safer than planes. If a boat catches fire, or its engine stalls, there is usually time enough to move to a safe area, or to get on a … Read more

Or, is it a colony? The question may seem preposterous to those who are content to see reality purely in legal terms.  But, it is one that must be asked with all seriousness in the light of events like those triggered by the recent abduction of broadcast journalist Ces Drilon and her ABS-CBN crew by … Read more

One of my students, Arnold P. Alamon, has written a graduate thesis titled “Lives on Hold: Sons of Migrant Parents.”  It is based on the retrospective accounts of the six young men he interviewed on what it was like to create their own lives while their parents worked abroad. Poignant and rich in detail, their … Read more

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo seems everywhere these days distributing rice, money, scholarships, and other forms of assistance to the poor. She calls these “katas ng VAT” (“juice from VAT”), a cynical appropriation of the phrase “katas ng Saudi” that adorns tricycles, jeepneys, and taxis bought with remittances from overseas work.  But there is no similarity … Read more

It is difficult to imagine Claro M. Recto advertising a brand of soap, or Jose W. Diokno endorsing a brand of toothpaste, or Santanina Rasul lending her lovely face to a skin-whitening product.  All three were once senators of the Republic to whom the serious business of deciding what directions we should pursue as a … Read more