In its first 50 days in office, the Duterte presidency has explicitly identified two targets for destruction. The first: the drug lords and their henchmen and protectors; the other, the oligarchs. The war against these two declared enemies is as complex as it can be. It generates new problems that the government may not be … Read more

We should have seen it coming when, after then President Fidel V. Ramos allowed the dictator’s remains to be repatriated and buried in the Ilocos in 1993, the Marcos family announced that the Marcos Museum and Mausoleum in Batac, Ilocos Norte, would be but a provisional resting place for the former president. Insisting that this … Read more

Scan the Constitution and you will find the concept of human rights at the center of that expansive document—a veritable fixed compass that orients citizens to the limits of governmental power.  When it was ratified, no one asked if these rights are inherent in all human beings, or whether, for example, criminals can be considered … Read more

In the first half hour of last Monday’s State of the Nation Address, President Duterte’s voice was nowhere to be found. The man at the podium was struggling not just to read the text on the teleprompter, but also to own it. The prepared speech had some finely crafted phrases that elicited earnest applause. But … Read more

As we go through the motions of another State of the Nation Address (Sona), it is important to remind ourselves that, although we live in a country bounded by the sea, everything that we do or fail to do takes place in the context of a bigger and more troubled world.  No elected government directs … Read more

The South China Sea controversy is wrapped in paradoxes that are symptomatic of the tension between the practical realities of the geopolitical system of unequal nation-states and the universal norms of an emergent global legal order. China is part of the world system of nation-states, yet it acts like a regional hegemon standing above international … Read more

There is no question today about the rampant character of the drug menace in our country. The public perception that the problem has far exceeded the capacity of normal law enforcement has no doubt greatly contributed to the election of Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency. The tough-talking former mayor of Davao City ran on the … Read more

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte dutifully went through the rituals of a tightly scripted inaugural ceremony last Thursday.  He embraced the full text of his prepared speech with good humor, giving it a tone and a cadence that hewed closely to the established patterns of inaugural speeches. The speech was brief and had a simple structure.  … Read more

The British vote to leave the European Union is likely to trigger a chain of complex reactions whose impact cannot be fully calculated. It has already caused a steep drop in the value of the pound sterling and of shares in the London stock market.  That was expected. But the ripple effects in the rest … Read more

THERE ARE suggestions that, recognizing the archipelagic nature of the country and the disparate cultures that thrived in it, Jose Rizal would have proposed a federal system of government for an independent Filipino nation.  Indeed, federalism might have appealed to those who, in the closing years of Spanish rule, were eager to kick out the … Read more