As graduate students in England in the late 1960s, my wife and I struck a close friendship with a classmate from Iraq and his Lebanese girlfriend. He was a Muslim Kurd, and she was a Maronite Catholic. Although he carried an Iraqi passport and was sent to England on a scholarship by the Iraqi government, … Read more

Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad’s acceptance of an invitation to lecture on the budget at the University of the Philippines School of Economics the other week would have been the perfect occasion to grill him about his brainchild, the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program. Academic culture encourages people to discuss and debate issues in a manner … Read more

As we look back to that fateful day in September 1972 42 years ago, when Ferdinand Marcos proclaimed martial law, we need to understand how and why many Filipinos accepted one-man rule in the first instance. The threat of authoritarian rule will remain so long as we do not recognize that our inherited institutions of … Read more

It must feel terrible for US President Barack Obama to enter the final years of his presidency ordering air attacks against Islamist rebel forces in Iraq and Syria. One can hardly recognize today the idealistic young president who won the Nobel Peace Prize after pledging that he would bring home the last American soldier from … Read more

Rizal’s two novels, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” shook me to the core of my being when I first read them as a young student for reasons that I could not explain. No other books have since had that kind of impact on me. They were dangerous in their time, and they remain dangerous … Read more

Once the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law comes before Congress, we can expect its key provisions to be challenged on constitutional grounds. Its critics will assail these provisions as tantamount to a de facto recognition of a dual-state situation. Constitutionality is also bound to be raised at the Supreme Court, which, not too long ago, struck … Read more

We have all experienced being stuck in “monstrous” traffic jams. Used in this context, the adjective merely refers to the largeness of the problem. But the original references of the word “monster” may, in fact, be more appropriate to the kind of complex vehicular traffic that huge metropolitan centers like Metro Manila generate and confront … Read more

For many Filipinos, peacekeeping work for the United Nations may be just another form of overseas employment.  But, for the Philippine government that deploys its nationals to serve as peacekeepers in many conflict zones across the world, it is a noble mission, a fulfillment of an obligation, and a fundamental expression of commitment to the … Read more

Mention the word “bureaucracy,” and people are likely to take it as a detested term for long delays, inefficiency, clerical ineptness, petty arrogance, and lack of empathy. This is all so ironic. For bureaucracy, in its original sense, referred to the most rational form of organization ever invented—a “regime of experts,” wrote Max Weber, its … Read more

A good friend of mine, Manoling de Leon, who reads my columns with the analytical mind of a well-read autodidact, sent me a question the other day for which I thought I had an adequate answer. “If the prime motive is to attract foreign investment, why not simply ask the Supreme Court how to legally … Read more