The story is told that in Basilan public school teachers know more or less when the dreaded Abu Sayyaf would strike again.  The older boys in their classes suddenly disappear at the same time.  These schoolboys, meek pupils a good part of the year, are the bandit group’s reserve army, trained to become fighters for … Read more

When our parents are gone, and our friends and kin have moved on to distant parts, there is often little delight to be derived from returning to the place of our childhood.  The landscape alienates us.  Nothing in it seems to fix memory.  Our past life vanishes like a mirage. The monuments, markets, streets and … Read more

The subtext of the ongoing military operation against the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan is that this is as much a reassertion of national sovereignty over Mindanao as it is a bid to rescue civilian hostages taken by a bandit group. In many ways, the Manila government is still conducting a pacification mission in uncharted territory.  … Read more

The rule of law and the norm of equal justice are being invoked to oppose giving special treatment to the detained former president.  But the enormous security precautions deployed to ensure his safety under detention already single him out for special treatment. We cannot treat Erap like an ordinary criminal; he is not an ordinary … Read more

A vote, in many ways, is like a dream.  You don’t really know how it is formed, and why it takes the shape it has.  In fact, it is the result of many impressions acquired largely by chance.  There is very little about it that one can consider deliberate or willful. When we have to … Read more

The immediate challenge facing the Arroyo government is not whether it can produce a 13-0 sweep in the current senatorial race, but whether it can conduct credible and orderly elections under conditions of heightened political tension.  In the eyes of the world, this is the real test of its viability as a government. In a … Read more

At the height of the street fighting in Mendiola in the morning of May 1st, my daughter Kara, a television reporter, was sent to Edsa to cover the re-occupation and the clean-up of the shrine by nuns and members of the Couples for Christ.  The little story she stumbled upon in that very site of … Read more

There is this cynical view that nothing much distinguishes people power from mob rule: you call it people power when you sympathize with it, and mob rule when you disagree with it.  Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago subscribes to a related version of this thought when she reduces people power to “a numbers game.”  From her perspective, … Read more

It was shocking to hear how two policemen tried to explain their participation in the gruesome murder of PR man Bubby Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito.  “We were misled,” they said.  “We were made to believe it was a legitimate operation.” These killers were members of the police, specifically of the elite group within … Read more

In this season of Lent, we may forgive Raymond Fortun, Joseph Estrada’s young lawyer, for suggesting that the willful prosecution of his client recalls Christ’s own persecution.  At a recent press conference, he said:  “Two thousand years ago, Christ was falsely accused, deprived of his right to defend himself, thrown to the mob and put … Read more