To the Alumni Association: It was with a heavy sense of disappointment that I read about the decision of the Ateneo’s Board of Trustees to unanimously reject Mr. Manuel Pangilinan’s resignation from the board over the plagiarized commencement speech delivered to this year’s graduating class. In my twelve years at the Ateneo, I was taught [...]
I always check the comments section on news sites that have them. They help give me an arbitrary and unbalanced peek at how your average Filipino thinks. One of the big stories over the long weekend was the plagiarized commencement speech delivered at the Ateneo by Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. chairman Manuel Pangilinan, [...]
Despite years of voters’ education and politicians’ claims about how much smarter the electorate has become, it still boils down to some 53% of respondents on a Social Weather Stations survey inclined to re-elect Senator Ramon Revilla Jr., scourge of pervy doctors and the Metro Manila Film Fest. Senator Manuel Lapid, harbinger of doom, also [...]
2007 was supposed to be the revenge of the opposition, what with seven candidates in the opposition (eight if you count Sen. Francis Pangilinan), trouncing the administration candidates very soundly.
Remember that grade school retort “wala yan sa lolo ko? (roughly: my grandfather is even more badass than that)” that nobody ever really used except ironically?
The Philippine zeitgeist has hardly had time to forget how the Commission on Elections denied gay rights group Ang Ladlad party-list accreditation for basically being gay, but its president Danton Remoto is already exploring other means to get to Congress, this time as a senator. Promising reform and a departure from traditional politics (and one [...]
With magic man, and senator, Francis “Chiz” Escudero’s decision not to run for president (or at all) in 2010, our hopes of a perfect tandem have forever been shattered. Indolent Indio had been waiting to throw our support behind a superhero team up of Senator Richard Gordon with Escudero as his VP if for nothing [...]
Life imitating art? Powerful families operating above the law, and using violence to get what they want sounds like something out of an HBO TV-movie. Unless you’re in the Philippines, where the Sopranos have nothing on your friendly neighborhood political warlord.
Motorists who have been turned away from gas stations with no gas, and those who have been left with no choice but to stock whatever was available (suspiciously, the more expensive Shell V-Power) will be glad to know that the past few days were all just a bad dream.
Wan Chai, Hong Kong – That we Filipinos see the law as something that can be bent is a given. This mentality seems to extend to other, more immutable laws, though. The law of gravity, say. Philippine air regulations prohibit the use of mobile phones and other devices with transmitters aboard airplanes. The rationale being [...]