One can be certain that almost every Filipino today desires change in the way the nation is run.  What form that change should take is, however, the subject of much debate. Some believe that if only we can have better leaders, there may be no need to change the system. Others think the quality of … Read more

As we now have seen, Proclamation 1017 had two basic objectives: first, to create a climate of urgency to justify extreme police measures and, thus, a chilling effect on the public; and second, to test the public acceptability of the use of even more coercive measures in the future. The Arroyo regime’s readiness to use … Read more

In modern, stable democracies, politics is kept within institutional limits.  It is not allowed to invade other spheres of society, or to occupy the greater part of a nation’s time.  The public remains conscious that there are other equally important things in life worth pursuing.  There is art, there is economics, there is science, there … Read more

Almost everyone will probably agree that our national life today is pervaded by a sense of exhaustion.  This is best indicated by the weariness we exhale at seeing the faces of the same persons who have dominated the political stage in the last forty years.  Instead of finding in them traces of the values we … Read more

The more we regard events as having a life of their own, rather than as things we can shape, the more paralyzed we feel.  The less we act, the more our society appears distant from us.  The more we demand guarantees before we can act or believe, the more we feel like outsiders to our … Read more

Ferdinand Marcos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo – in their uncanny parallel ways — show that the easy part of power is seizing it.  The difficult part is using it with wisdom and restraint.  This is where most extra-legal takeovers falter. Their objectives remain too general; the limits of their intervention are left undefined. The Philippines had … Read more

Every time we allow politicians to steal elections with impunity, to rule without accountability, to rob the public coffers routinely, and to lie brazenly – we are creating the conditions for military intervention. Professional armies go hand in hand with strong democracies.  We are not a strong democracy; that is why the temptation to play … Read more

In the last analysis, some people must take responsibility for what happened at the Ultra.  Mass poverty set the stage for the tragedy, and mass media commercialism made it happen.  For the purpose of assigning liability, the legal system cannot avoid attributing motive and allocating blame. In search of better forms of solidarity, we cannot … Read more

Without mentioning my name, but quoting liberally from my column last Sunday, my friend and fellow Inquirer columnist, Amando Doronila, takes issue (PDI, 02/01/06) with me on my criticism of Consultative Commission Chairman Jose V. Abueva and newlyappointed Presidential Adviser for Electoral Reforms Hilario G. Davide, Jr. I welcome Doro’s defense of Abueva and Davide. … Read more

The word “pakyaw” appears in many of our languages.  It means “wholesale”, though it’s rarely used as a family name.  The family of Manny, our boxing champion, spells it “Pacquiao”, the Latin/Italian form in which the 16th century voyager Pigafetta rendered the words he first heard in our islands.  The word itself could have originated … Read more