MY San Francisco Bay Area colleague and dear friend, Rodel Rodis, has just written an opinion piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer entitled, “A sometimes clueless president.”  It bewails what,…

WITH the September Pulse Asia survey on presidential preferences already hitting the papers, the ABB (Anyone But Binay) Brigade must be giddy with joy. I was furnished a copy of…

IN THE 2004 US presidential elections, the Republicans portrayed George W. Bush as a man of firm conviction, steadfast, decisive, the kind of leader America needed in fighting the war…

IN THE 1992 US presidential campaign, which pitted Bill Clinton against reelectionist George Bush (the elder), Clinton’s camp focused on the recession plaguing the country, while Bush was riding high…

SENATOR and would-be presidential candidate Alan Peter Cayetano hurled this question at 2016 front-runner, Vice-President Jejomar Binay, in connection with the current Senate probe of the Makati City Hall Building…

“DARING to take the MRT Challenge,” with Sen. Grace Poe, DOTC Secretary Joseph Abaya and Malacañang Deputy Spokesperson Abigail Valte taking the notoriously inefficient public transport system, may have translated…

Confusing the enemy is an established tactic in warfare. Sun Tsu’s Art of War and Nicolo Machiavelli’s The Prince mentioned this as one effective means of making the enemy off-balance…

Being from Tacloban, I’m understandably excited about the forthcoming visit of Pope Francis to my hometown in January 2015. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, according to…

The demolition campaign against Jojo Binay has begun in earnest. Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes have apparently mounted their own efforts, parallel to those of Mar Roxas and the…

MY late boss, Tony de Joya, chairman of Advertising & Marketing Associates, was also, at one time, executive vice-president of Precision Electronics and led the negotiations for a joint venture…

MANY, including myself, wanted to hear the 2014 SONA as much to learn about the State of Noynoy Aquino as we did about the State of the Nation. Thus, in…

THE battle lines have been drawn. On one side, high caliber apologists have been harnessed to justify the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) of Noynoy Aquino and Butch Abad, in the…

IF YOU haven’t heard of BUB, you will be seeing a lot of its effects in the next several months leading up to the 2016 elections — P20.1 billion worth…

WHAT should a very important politician, who is serving a life sentence for plunder, do with his time throughout his incarceration? I threw this question at the folks at my…

ON JULY 21, 1982, former senator and former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez was ambushed in his car in Quezon City. He took six bullets but miraculously survived. His driver was…

IRONY of ironies. Noynoy Aquino appears to be facing the same predicament in dealing with the pork barrel and Malampaya scandals as Marcos did in the wake of the assassination…

I RECEIVED a letter from former Marcos regime Prime Minister and Finance Minister Cesar E. A. Virata to correct what he thought was a mistake I had made in my…

There was a collective expression of disappointment among many Filipinos and the media because Barack Obama “gave no  categorical commitment” that America would “defend” the Philippines if its dispute with…

In 2005, the late Samuel Ong, then deputy director of the NBI, blew the whistle on the Hello Garci phone calls that resulted in the “election” of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and…

THOSE of you who are waiting for a Freedom of Information Bill crafted to your full satisfaction should not hold your breath. You folks will pass out from lack of…

OVER a week ago, Kit Tatad, in his column in Manila Standard Today, wrote about the newly launched program of Malacañang to repair the 2016 presidential bandwagon of Mar Roxas…

I sat through a streaming video coverage of the testimony of Ruby Tuason at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the pork barrel scam. I soon realized that the…

I saw a movie the other night that reminded me of the Philippines. Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, is set in the year 2154. It’s about a man-made…

I saw a movie the other night that reminded me of the Philippines. “Elysium,” starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, is set in the year 2154. It’s about a man-made…

THE 2013 Survey of Enterprises on Corruption conducted by Social Weather Station tells us that the Bureau of Customs, the Land Transportation Office, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Department…

CONTRARY to the glowing praise that the super rich residents of Dasmariñas Village have showered  on their security guards, in the wake of their altercation with Makati Mayor Junjun Binay,…

WE still have to hear the last word about the Culture of Impunity that is said to pervade our government and the bureaucracy, and there I was, the other day,…

We will continue to hear horror stories in the wake of the devastation inflicted by typhoon Yolanda on Eastern Visayas, particularly Tacloban in Leyte and Guiuan in Samar. Riza, a…

I SINCERELY believe the entire country (particularly my home province of Leyte)  should thank Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas and Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, as…

I KNOW that Tacloban will rise, like the Phoenix, from its utter devastation. My beloved hometown and the province of Leyte have been through worse. It was in Palo, a…