It is rare in our personality-driven political system to hear candidates of the opposition openly champion an existing program of the administration they are seeking to replace.  But, such must have been the impact of the conditional cash transfer program, better known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), that this previously much-criticized program now … Read more

THOUGH IT is far from being an iconic structure, it is difficult to find another place in the University of the Philippines Diliman campus that is quite like the Faculty Center. Until it was gutted by fire last Friday morning, the FC, or Bulwagang Rizal, was the single biggest structure in the university to house … Read more

Without any doubt, last week’s presidential debate, the second in the series authorized by the Commission on Elections, was a watershed in Philippine politics. It set a new tone for political discourse by allowing the contenders for the country’s highest position to break the basic norms of civility and courtesy in a nationally televised conversation. … Read more

The other day, I was guest speaker at the opening of the new Marcelo H. del Pilar Museum in Sitio Cupang, Bulacan, Bulacan, where the famous Filipino writer and leader of the propaganda movement in Spain was born.  Located in the same site where a shrine to his name has long stood, the Del Pilar … Read more

Former Senate president Jovito Salonga, who died on March 10 at the age of 95, was one of those rare scholar-politicians who dazzled my generation with their brilliance, eloquence, and patriotism. The other figure who quickly comes to mind—because he and Salonga almost always appeared on the horizon like a pair of stars—was former senator … Read more

We sometimes call it “gut feel”—a phrase that designates the positive or negative emotions we have about people or issues. Conscious that such emotions do not supply a reasonable basis for an opinion or action, we may, when challenged, offer a justification for our initial feelings. Coming after the fact, this justification is not the … Read more

Referring to the aftermath of World War II which had engulfed all of Europe, the Czech writer Milan Kundera noted: “[H]atreds withdraw to the interior of nations … the goal of the fight is no longer the future … but the past; the new European war will play out only on the battlefield of memory.” … Read more

YANGON—Nothing can better remind us of the significance of the 1986 Edsa people power uprising, whose 30th anniversary we are observing this week, than to view it in relation to what is happening today in Myanmar (Burma). By luck, I find myself in Yangon (Rangoon), its capital, where I have been attending a fascinating dialogue … Read more

Love is complex in the sense that it entails no less than the joint constitution of a world that uniquely belongs to two people in love. This is how I understand romantic love. In such a world, the loved one can be the person that s/he is, and feel affirmed on that basis, without any … Read more

Empathy, or compassion, is often the last trait we expect to find in modern society. But, that is only because we are wont to equate modernity with anonymity, depersonalization, and self-centeredness. We seldom see the flip side of these traits: i.e., the growth in society’s capacity to rise above the traditional divisions of race, nationality, … Read more