Men’s most enduring struggles are with their fathers, that is why they turn to their mothers for the support they badly need.  All their lives, they seek a way of dealing with their fathers’ authority, initially impugning and rebelling against it, but in the end measuring themselves against its unyielding standards. In their advanced years, … Read more

Perhaps the writer Francis Fukuyama was right.  It is not so much wealth or power that moves people ultimately, but the desire for recognition – Plato’s “thymos”.  “The desire for recognition,” observes Fukuyama, “is the most specifically political part of the human personality because it is what drives men to want to assert themselves over … Read more

The issue of where and how to bury the corpse of Ferdinand Marcos has less to do with the past than with the future.  There is little we can do with our memory of the Marcos past except to clarify and write it. But there is much we can do still to redress the injury … Read more

I thought it was a great luxury and a welcome break to be invited to speak at a gathering of the University of the Philippines alumni in Guam.  I had never traveled to this part of the Pacific.  I had heard stories of entire barrios in Pampanga being transplanted virtually to Guam.  I was curious … Read more

What surprises me about Indonesia is not so much that Suharto has finally resigned as that it took so long for this much-awaited event to happen.  An unbowed Suharto was fast becoming a relic of a bygone age.  It has been 12 years since Edsa.  Suharto came to power at about the time Marcos became … Read more

So much has been said and written about the alleged economic illiteracy of Erap that one wonders if there is anything he could do from here on that is not likely to be greeted by a smug “I told you so.” Typical remarks about Erap are unrelenting in their meanness. Among my bourgeois friends, the … Read more

I think we have to abandon the idea that there can ever be a president for all seasons, a leader suitable for all times, representing in distilled form all the virtues of our race.  Such a president exists only in the imagination.  We would have to stay home on election day and not cast our … Read more

This is a curious season for Philippine politics:  while the political left is stabilizing the electoral process by joining it with enthusiasm, the right seems bent on destabilizing it by spreading wild talk about fraud and failure of elections. This is only the second time in more than 50 years that the left has found … Read more

“All that is necessary… is that good men do nothing,” said Edmund Burke.  Burke’s powerful reminder has always pricked many consciences. Every election year, a few good Filipinos, moved by Burke but otherwise without any compelling reason to become politicians, find themselves wading in the murky waters of traditional politics. The first thing they learn … Read more

The party-list system is probably the most important feature of this year’s election.  But there has been absolutely no indication that the general public and the leaders of the country think so.  By the shabby treatment they have so far received from the Comelec, party-list groups are beginning to look more like nuisance candidates — … Read more