Our national interests in relation to Iraq seem so clear that one needs to ask why our leaders have not been very forthright about our country’s official position on this urgent foreign policy question.  We continue to treat the issue primarily in terms of our commitment to the American-led war on terrorism, forgetting that a … Read more

By declaring she will not run in the 2004 election, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has done what is unthinkable in Philippine politics: withdraw proudly when it is no longer possible to run with dignity. Such leave-taking is rare, for the one who is taking a leave is still very much around.  The president has freely … Read more

He came in from the cold sometime in 1998, like an emblem of the new shady lumpen-mandarins that had just come to power in the country.  He was an enigma.  Hardly anyone could remember what he looked like, nor what he had between the ears.  He talked like a stevedore, yet seemed to have more … Read more

The election of a movie actor as president of the country in 1998 and his ouster by people power in 2001 are watersheds in our nation’s political life.  These two events represent the political awakening of two distinct social classes – the middle class and the poor.  They also signal the reactivation of two parallel … Read more

Both the surveys and the mass media confirm it: President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s popularity is vanishing quite fast.  So fast that by 2004, there may be nothing left to support a re-election bid.  The presidency that fell on her lap by sheer accident is a test of fitness rarely given to aspiring presidents.  The growing … Read more

My first grandchild, Julia, turns two tomorrow.  I have looked upon this day with an expectation that I do not remember reserving even for my own children’s birthday.  In the past two years, she has been my sister, philosopher, and friend, keeping me company each morning when everyone has left for work. This baby rounds … Read more

There is little a country can do when foreign governments, out of fear, shut down their embassies because of serious threats to their security.  The move is of the same category as the issuance of advisories against traveling to particular destinations.  The host country can do two things:  take action to neutralize the threat, and … Read more

Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Jose Guerra, came to the University of the Philippines the other day to give a lecture on Cuba’s relation to the world.  The point of his lecture was to show that despite the blockade by which the United States has tried to strangle his tiny country for the last 40 years, … Read more

In 1946, after hijacking our war against Spain and keeping us for nearly 50 years as a colonial possession, the United States of America gave us back our freedom.  That freedom was empty and meaningless because it was given with many strings attached.  Our leaders accepted it because they thought this was still better than … Read more

Most of the world’s poor live in about 140 so-called “developing” countries.  So insignificant is the development actually taking place in these societies that Peruvian economist Oswaldo de Rivero calls them “non-viable national economies” (NNEs) — dysfunctional “quasination states” unable to participate in any meaningful sense in the modern global economy. In the last 40 … Read more