Thirty-four years ago, the then incumbent president, Ferdinand Marcos, invoked an obscure provision in the 1935 Constitution to free his presidency from basic constitutional restraints.  The imposition of Martial Law, which was meant to preserve the State, was supposed to last only for the duration of the imminent threat to public order.  But Marcos shrewdly … Read more

The transformation of air travel, particularly into the United States, into a tedious, time-consuming, and often humiliating activity is only the most obvious effect of 9/11. It is perhaps the least important. The paranoia that 9/11 spawned has produced a new international security doctrine that is undermining democracy everywhere. It has given a new warrant … Read more

There is something perverse in the way the leaders of Sigaw ng Bayan are peddling the shift to a parliamentary system.  They advertise it as if it were a miraculous cure for all our problems.  They claim that it will treat political instability and end political adventurism among our soldiers; that it will spur economic … Read more

Profiting from test leaks is probably as old as testing itself.  Advances in the technology of retrieval and duplication of information, coupled with the heightened competitiveness in almost all professions, may have made resort to it easier and more tempting.  Even so, we may assume that the methods and principles for preventing it and managing … Read more

The state of national emergency that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared on Feb. 24, 2006 was supposed to have lasted only one week.  But events in the last six months suggest a different conclusion: emergency rule may have, in fact, become Ms Arroyo’s paradigm of governance. In various parts of the country today, the military conducts … Read more

All over the Arab world and beyond, it is Hezbollah that is on everyone’s lips these days — not the Al-Qaida, not the Taliban, not the Hamas.  Israel’s army, the most powerful in the Middle East, is not fighting the Lebanese national army.  It is fighting a militant armed group inside Lebanon that is possibly … Read more

I do not share the view of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) that impeachment cannot yield any truth unless it is performed according to fair rules and with the common good in mind. I believe that the impeachment of any president, no matter how it is conducted, can be an important source … Read more

I had a hard time following Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s recent State of the Nation Address.  It wasn’t just because the indiscriminate applause that punctuated nearly every sentence was interfering with the flow of her hour-long speech.  It was more because the whole speech was making no sense to me until I began to pay more … Read more

At the heart of the nation’s current crisis is the failure of its political system to put to rest persistent doubts about the right of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to continue exercising the powers of the presidency.  The principal cause of this failure is the system’s inability to protect its institutions against abuse by a reckless … Read more

My brother Pablo David, better known as Father Ambo, became a bishop on the same day the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines put out a pastoral statement that puzzled many people. The statement touched on a range of issues, but it was the bishops’ position on impeachment that was eagerly awaited.  Many rightly thought … Read more