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

She came into the world a year ago today, the first grandchild of my sister Raquel.  Her parents named her Erin, a lovely Gaelic word derived from “Eire” or Ireland.  On this blessed day, they have ordered a cake and balloons for the little girl, acutely aware that her first birthday could also be her … Read more

Pampanga’s pride today is no longer Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who, for a growing number of Filipinos, represents everything that is decadent in Philippine politics.  It is its newly-elected governor, the priest, Father Eddie T. Panlilio, whose campaign for the governorship against Ms Arroyo’s two well-funded candidates brought out the passionate volunteerism of Pampanga’s young professionals, entrepreneurs, … Read more

In a survey conducted shortly before the May 14 election, 40% of the respondents said they expected the administration to cheat, while 56% said they did not believe the administration would do so. It is clear by now that a climate of pernicious distrust attended and shaped the conduct of the last election. This explains … Read more

In the campaign leading up to tomorrow’s election, political platforms or programs of government – the basic ingredients of a functioning democracy — predictably took a backseat.  This sad reality not only mirrors the relative immaturity of the country’s politics, it also explains the lack of coherence in the nation’s governance. As in previous elections, … Read more

Pampanga is Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s bailiwick, the only province in all of Luzon where she actually won in the 2004 presidential election.  GMA did not grow up here, nor does she have a good command of the language, but the province regards her as its most illustrious daughter. Her father, the late President Diosdado Macapagal, a … Read more