Author Archive

Filipinos have been mounting a bit of an inward reflection and soul-searching in the face of overwhelming shame brought about by the appallingly incompetent handling of the August 23 Mendoza hostage incident that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of eight foreign tourists. Something interesting was dug up by the mostly half-witted efforts in this exercise taken by some Philippine apologists and triumphalists -- the ... Full story

Much of the criticism surrounding the handling of the Manila hostage crisis that ended in the preventable deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists had to do with the intrusive coverage of the event by the Philippine Media. Had the hostage-taker, ex-police officer Rolando Mendoza, (who had access to a TV set installed in the besieged bus) not been kept abreast of police personnel ... Full story

Last Sunday, the 21st of August was the death anniversary of National "Hero" Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. That date is significant to me because I remember back in 1983, how his brother Agapito -- what's-up-with-the-nickname -- Aquino in a stroke of marketing genius began to fly a flag bearing the acronym ATOM (August Twenty One Movement) that was to go on to become indelibly associated ... Full story

The Leftist-infiltrated organisation Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) throws in their two cents on the matter of the first visit of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III to the United States. In its "Issue Analysis No. 09" on the subject, published on the 14th of August 2009, the group stated that it sees Noynoy's agenda in this coming visit as an affirmation ... Full story

According to a study conducted by the Brussels-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the Philippines is Mother Nature's top whipping boy, trumping all other nations on the planet in a "list of countries that are most vulnerable to disasters". That kind of contradicts the "blessed" place in the heart of the Almighty that we constantly imagine ourselves to be in ... Full story

In the movie Inception the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio leads a team of dreamweavers on a mission to implant a concept in the inner reaches -- three levels down, to be exact -- of a powerful industrialist's subconcious. The expectation here is that an idea that originates at even the lowest depths of one's subconcious ultimately manifests itself in one's behaviour during the wakeful ... Full story

Nobody who rests comfily within the bed of Establishment thinking seems to want to take a position on the debate around abortion. All of what the venerable Ellen Tordesillas can add to the debate, for example, is a wish of "good luck" to those bold enough to take a position and slug it out in what is otherwise a splendid arena that pits the ... Full story

Why is President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III smiling less nowadays? Perhaps it is because reality is starting to hit him -- the reality of the future and the reality that he, the President of the Philippines, is surrounded by morons. The problem with small moronic minds is that the people these inhabit lack a fundamental ability to take an imaginative step out of the ... Full story

The Inquirer.net Editor has gone on a defensive strike against "so-called pundits" critical of President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III's 26th July State of the Nation Address (SONA). The Op-Ed piece came across to me as no more than a long-winded admonishment of how so much of what was in the SONA that could be "chew on" even by "non-fans" was left unappreciated.... Full story

After reading an English-translated transcript of President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III's recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), it started to bug me that there was no easy way to verify the true financial position of the Government on the basis of what P.Noy said in his speech until this question is answered: What exactly is meant by a "depleted" national budget?... Full story

By my reckoning (on the basis of its English translation), President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III devoted 1,558 words out of the 4,055 words in his 35-minute State of the Nation Address (SONA) to whining about the plunder of the National Budget (whatever that means exactly) and the salaries and bonuses of some Government employees. That's 38.4 percent of his speech devoted to what was ... Full story

Boo hoo hoo. The national budget is depleted and the new President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III, as it turns out, is no "superman". For the Average Filipino Schmoe who latched on to the promise of the "magic" of an Aragorn-led mighty army of righteousness galloping in to rescue him from his wretchedness, the road ahead leads back to Square One. And the only thing ... Full story

Water supply has always been a problem in the Philippines. Since time immemorial, many Metro Manila residents have even had to rely on electric booster pumps to suck out the essential juice from city's decrepit mains and store as much of it in privately-owned storage tanks. In many suburbs, there is an arms race of booster pumps among residents. Households possessing the most sucking power ... Full story

Is it being "destructive" to publish a litany of the gaffes that have come to collectively characterise the administration of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III? Some people dismiss such an exercise as "nitpicking" and exhort the "offending" parties to take a more "positive" perspective, while others preach the virtues of dismissing these call-outs as nothing more than noise dished out by "hecklers" and ... Full story

Kris Aquino is no longer just another screeching Filipino showbiz personality. She is now the sister of the President of the Philippines. The timing of her marital woes with basketball player James Yap couldn't be worse for the spin machinery of her brother President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III -- a man who owes much of his appeal to the masses to the Catholic mind of ... Full story

Esteemed columnist of the Inquirer.net Conrado de Quiros unwittingly undermines official Aquinoist spin in an amusing attempt to make something of former President Gloria Arroyo's tardiness... FOR THE orientation seminar last Thursday for "newbies" in Congress, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came in late. After signing the attendance sheet at the Batasan entrance, she wound her way to ... Full story

Filipinos are culturally hobbled by a compulsion to assert class dominance over the other. Much of the priority pursuit of the average Filipino involves decking himself in the latest branded t-shirt, sporting the latest mobile device, and uttering the latest hollywood catchphrase. Nothing new nor nothing surprising about this. Much of what contributes to the impoverishment of the Filipino is driven by a neurotic susceptibility ... Full story

Organised religion has a tradition of being averse to stepping up to a serious debate on a level field when its dogma is challenged. Certainly the Roman Catholic Church is not an exception to this tradition of intolerance to free inquiry. I wrote a while back how the Roman Catholic Church is really... an institution ... Full story

I don't understand what is so complicated about this whole English-versus-Tagalog "debate". For me, it is a simple return-on-investment calculation. Compare every peso of public funds spent on Tagalog-articulated instruction and every peso of public funds spent on English-articulated instruction. Which of those two pesos spent contributes more to opening more doors of opportunity for the average Filipino? As I wrote way back in ... Full story

Now that President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and his Cabinet have "hit the ground running", it is time to examine the focal point around which spin the complex of platitudes and promises delivered to us over much of Noynoy's presidential campaign -- Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap (translated literally: "If no corruption THEN no poverty"). A few of my colleagues here have already made an ... Full story

I've always called politicians "bozos". And for the record I personally consider Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III a bozo's bozo. Add me to a box of "witchhunters" then, given this categorical declaration coming from me. Noynoy is in a class of politicians probably occupied by only two men -- him and former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada. Between the two of them, they embody 99% of ... Full story

I gotta hand it to out-going president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Despite the immense amount of energy expended by the Philippine Media over the last ten years to turn her from hero of the Edsa II "revolution" into the reviled cunning "evil" empress out to divest the hapless Filipino of his hard-"fought" freedom, she manages to consistently remain one step ahead of her detractors. ... Full story

The Inquirer.net Editor, true to form, sheds rose-coloured light on the token frugality President-Elect Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III applies to the conduct of his inauguration at the end of June. This "virtue" is made stark by using the "evil" extravagance of out-going President Gloria Arroyo as a backdrop to heighten the contrast. This is the ... Full story

The good news about corruption is that it makes for good campaign fodder for politicians who happen to be running at a time of widespread public frustration over its endemic prevalence. The bad news is that come the time for said politician to deliver we find that corruption is not exactly the tangible beast it is made out to be during the campaign.... Full story

I heard from a little bird that someone notable will be writing the speech to be delivered by President-Elect Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III in his inauguration as 15th President of the Republic. From what I know about this noted person, it might be prudent to highlight certain requirements made public about the nature of this speech-to-be. What ... Full story

Decent sex education in Philippine public schools. Long overdue. But then how can this become a reality with the Philippine Taliban making sure that "offensive" material is being kept off public school textbooks... Education officials insist that the bishops have nothing to worry about because the is open to deleting portions of the teaching modules that the Church finds offensive.... Full story

It is an indisputable reality that the weak are allowed to exist by the much-evolved decency of the powerful. It's a reality evident everywhere. Much of the world as we see it today was shaped by those victorious in battle. And much as we deny it, the independence granted to us on the 4th of July 1946 is a gift. And deny this reality arduously ... Full story

The following are the words newly-minted President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III reported to the Media after having received a courtesy telephone call from outgoing President Gloria Arroyo who wished to congratulate him on his appointment to the Presidency: I have to give her the courtesies. She's the current President. She's older than me. She's a woman. I would be doing injustice to my parents if ... Full story

Guess what's coming up: "Independence" Day. More precisely, it is the could-have-been day of independence unilaterally declared by General Emilio Aguinaldo back on the 12th of June 1898 that we are celebrating this coming Saturday. Many who see that day as a day that defines "Filipino nationalism" are right. We are a nation because someone said so. It began way back in the 16th Century ... Full story

One of the great traditions of Philippine politics involves government officials extending their renowned family "values" out and into the fabric of governance. Indeed in the Philippines, governance, like success, is relative. Relatives and family friends (even clan "friendships" that go back a generation or two) making up the immediate officiating circles of everyone from lowly Barangay Captains to sitting presidents is pretty much a ... Full story

If I lower my guard and take the comfy view that I am fundamentally defined by where I was schooled, I'd call myself an "Atenean". When you are an Ateneo alumnus (and specially when you remain on as a faculty member), you usually come equipped with a lot of connections and the frame of mind to segue into "socially-oriented" projects if you wanna go down ... Full story

Ellen Tordesillas found the appropriate title for her recent blog There are still those left behind. In an act of hollow-headed banditry on February of 2006 a renegade group of military personnel stormed the Manila Peninsula with the apparent hope of using it as a base for inciting wider-scale mutiny across the military establishment. The subject of the "crusade" in this instance was supposedly ... Full story

Even as I've always harped about the culture of crime that pervades our society, a fuller extent of the Filipino's capacity to tolerate criminality and injustice has only recently revealed itself to me. This revelation comes in the wake of Ilda's article Election and everyday fraud which highlights the occurence of cheating in this year's elections, and Morga's Imelda's "jewelries" which brings ... Full story

Noted blogger Manuel L Quezon III provides us with a very informative piece on the rich traditions and symbolisms ingrained into the process of a new President assuming his office in Malacanang. In his recent piece Notes for the coming inaugural, Quezon highlights three rather interesting steps inherent to the traditional rites of transition of power in the highest office of the Philippine ... Full story

The lowness of the standards we apply to ourselves never ceases to amaze me. Even while we aspire to world-class achievement, we measure ourselves using scales that make our uniquely-Filipino flavor of mediocrity look golden. So too in what we consider to be the "achievement" of this year's presidential elections. As if one did not already get an attack of the cringes whenever we remember how ... Full story

Every day that's gone by since his "presumptive win" in this year's elections, Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III turns into a bigger and bigger chump. As we follow the self-created drama that now embroils his first step into the Presidency -- the "big" issue of his oath taking (the bigness of this issue an ironic but laughable resullt of his and his media lackeys' own ... Full story

According to the Inquirer.net Editor, the issue of Aquino's swearing into the Office of the President is "settled". MANILA, Philippines—The Supreme Court has apparently accepted presumptive presidential winner Sen. Benigno Aquino III’s declared intention to take his oath before a magistrate other than Chief Justice Renato Corona to underscore his opposition to Corona’s appointment by outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Aquino’s reported choice of Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales ... Full story

Lest some people here are under the mistaken impression that we are out to undermine the new administration of President-Elect Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, I thought I'd set the record straight. Noynoy won the election fair and square. He bagged that lucrative seat by garnering a number of votes greater than any one of the competing candidates in this year's elections. As such, quite obviously, ... Full story

President-elect Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III would've made any field commander serving on the ground in the latter part of of the Vietnam War proud. Just a week or so after he has been widely recognised as the next "President" of our excellent Republic, he has chalked up quite an impressive body count without actually gaining any significant tactical (much less strategic) ground as far as ... Full story

Here is an interesting excerpt from Manuel L Quezon III's recent column on the Inquirer.net, "The Mandate" where he gushes about Aquino's "landslide" win in this year's elections: It is the largest plurality since the present Constitution came into force; and only the second indisputable presidential win in a generation. It ends the legitimacy crisis of ... Full story

According to the Inquirer.net editor in his most recent Op-Ed, "President"-elect Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III garnered "the most remarkable mandate since the present Constitution’s ratification in 1987". Dude. And I thought the Inquirer.net had behaved like such a pathetic lackey of the Yellow Army all through the last twelve to 24 months leading up to this ... Full story

It seems that Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, despite being the unofficial president-elect of the moment still can't shed the old Aquino-franchised "Laban" ("fight!") rhetoric ingrained in his little mind despite him now being all set to taking his place in The Establishment. In one of her final acts as President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Renato Corona as Chief ... Full story

First of all I'd like to express how proud I am of the Philippines' Commission on Elections (COMELEC). It overcame the hexes cast upon it by shamans in the Philippine Media and the parties they supported, and stepped up in the face of overwhelming disapproval. Amidst the descent to a primitivist government, the COMELEC stands tall as a lone beacon of modernism in our backward ... Full story