Bowed by the weight of centuries
Too bad I cannot show a special painting here that would have made this article so much more touching.. “Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of...
View ArticleIn search of a vision
The floods in China, the fires in Europe, the earthquake in Haiti, the return of the Talibans in Afghanistan, and a surge of Covid-19 in the Philippines. The Internet and communications technology are...
View ArticleScience of political survival takes over
Right off the bat, politics to me means the classical Greek meaning. Anyway, that is where the very word “politics” came from, the Greek word “polis”. From that original term is the original meaning,...
View ArticleProfiteering in a pandemic
Profiteering in the worst of conditions is not a new heinous crime. Many in history have been rightly accused and publicly condemned for it. In different countries, laws have been enacted to precisely...
View ArticleLive and die with Covid-19
I caught myself being sucked into the perennial quicksand of controversy and negativity, driven mostly by partisanship – emotionally, that is. Thankfully, I have not engaged anyone in antagonistic...
View ArticleRevisit history, not revise it
I always wondered what deeper reason there was for teaching history, why all educational institutions made it a venerable subject. It seemed like sheer memorization to me when I was in high school....
View ArticleThose who pander, those who inspire
Last Tuesday, February 8, I witnessed a rare development. As the campaign period officially starts, a grand send-off of different national candidates happened. And, of course, it was the candidates for...
View ArticleThe power of choice
If people have different choices and are free to choose whatever or whoever they prefer, there is freedom. If people have different choices but are not free to express and go after their preference,...
View ArticleNo patria, no patriot
From 1983, my first experience in a rural, upland community, to 2021, my introduction to Gawad Kalinga, and now in 2022, I am still pursuing the elusive vision of addressing poverty from its roots,...
View ArticleAn unreliable reality
There have been many tools of control, and nothing is more insidious yet powerful than the control of other people’s minds. We all have some knowledge of history. We all know that there has been a long...
View ArticleIn a state of flux
There was a time when the failure to achieve a most important goal would have not only depressed me but actually sunk me into a long, despondent mood. There was a time when defeat, including in the...
View ArticleA promise of disruption
The calendar says that a year is literally turning around the corner as January is busy pushing December out. It does seem to be very cyclical at this time of the year. Towards New Year, things do seem...
View ArticlePatriotism and the ROTC
The ROTC program of the Philippines was junked without much resistance or regret because it was both unpopular and ineffective. The unpopularity was from scandals and controversies, including murder of...
View ArticleBeyond Lent
It is the climax of a special season in the Christian belief framework. The energy of sadness, betrayal, and corruption had been building up over the last several weeks. The natural ending is grotesque...
View ArticleBecoming a scammers paradise
The Philippines has long been known and awarded as a tourism favorite, more particularly our world-famous islands and beaches. Today, we are rushing to be known as a scammers paradise. We were never...
View ArticleThe plea for decent wages
If you are “caught between a rock and a hard place,” you are in a difficult situation where you have to choose between two equally unpleasant courses of action. That is where we find ourselves today in...
View ArticleLosing a generation
Ten-year-old Filipinos, 91% of them, cannot read and write well, cannot grasp instructions. They have barely stepped into Philippine society and they are already on the way to becoming a lost...
View ArticleMusings from a Filipino grandfather
It is another warm summer morning in the city and I am listening to nostalgic, sentimental songs that melt the heart. It is time for me to write my weekly column, a few days ahead of its Friday...
View ArticleNot giving up
It has been an interesting week for this veteran of many (but always related) causes. I have witnessed or participated in several discussions with friends and advocates about festering concerns,...
View ArticleInner Revolution
A man I most respect and wish I had more time to be with these past four decades asked me several days ago if I thought that there was hope for your country, particularly our youth. I was quite...
View ArticleEl Niño, El Filipino
Many have been complaining about traversing through flooded streets these past weeks. The rains are not constant but frequent enough to confirm that the rainy season has started. If the present pattern...
View ArticleHumbling, and embarrassing
I was finalizing my article for this week and was hoping to submit it well within my deadline. Before I could do so, however, I received a strange message from a co-worker of a favorite advocacy who...
View ArticleDIY (do it yourself)
It has been a rainy two weeks. After all the warnings about El Niño upon us, rains during the onset of a rainy season should be more than welcome. They are, actually, on the overall. Residents of Metro...
View ArticleA second look at poverty
I would like to be upbeat. What is life if we have nothing worthwhile to wake up to? No matter how many obstacles and challenges we face every day, there must be something of greater value up ahead. A...
View ArticleOur vicious cycles
I am reminded by the succinct advice of the wiser ones who were mentoring us in our college years and young adulthood. It is too bad that great wisdom had been handed down when the fire and energy of...
View ArticleRise with rice
By force of circumstance, there is now more attention given to rice. Recent news reports had a senator daring the National Food Authority to prove its worth as rice prices climb, followed by another...
View ArticleAdrift in a stormy sea
We are drifting. Not by design, I suspect, but despite whatever. I do not know whether we are sailing to go somewhere or just sailing and hoping not to sink. I have yet to hear where the destined land...
View ArticleIt is not about rice
It was never just about the price of rice, or its availability, but that was we ever paid attention to. And because we did not expand our understanding of what rice represents, we are stuck with...
View ArticleInside more difficult times
The long years of life and experience will often prod me to think of the bigger picture – because there always is one. We often pay a lot of attention to the never-ending stream of details that act...
View ArticleFree to express anti-China sentiments
I must admit that I did not expect it from this administration to take a firm stand against the bullying of China. But what I have been observing makes me happy to have been wrong in my apprehension....
View ArticleA frightening world
I am one like millions of others around the world who have been watching the deadly drams in Israel. And like most, I was horrified at the barbarism that has taken over humans. After the initial horror...
View ArticleRemembering history more than the holiday
If I wrote last week that the world was becoming a frightening space, this whole week has done nothing except to prove that it can get worse. As expected, the Hamas attack on Israel and the barbaric...
View ArticleStepping into a troubled future
Although many journalists and socio-political writers, including myself, have been quite consistent in pointing out how disruption is the central trait of the global environment, this very thought is...
View ArticleThe power of Christmas
There is a nipping in the air, not only the shift from habagat to cooler amihan, but more so by the exciting atmosphere of an approaching Christmas. It’s five weeks away but Christmas is not a day, it...
View ArticleStruggling for a better future
It is simply human, and Filipinos are human, too, to look ahead and imagine our families beyond today. I think it is embedded in our DNA. It might be as primal as the instinct to survive, with survival...
View ArticleNavigating our way to Christmas
In less than 4 weeks, we will be celebrating Christmas Day. I am assuming that Christmas Day will still be on December 25, a Monday, as I have not yet heard about it being moved to another day. How...
View ArticleAs the year ends
It’s a time for review and reflection, as it is when a cycle is about to end. It is not so easy to assess where and how we stand in life because that are seamless, we move from one moment to the other,...
View ArticleSame-same to 2024
I have frequently written that the changing of the year is more dramatically a change in numbers, i.e., 2023 to 2024. Because of that change, other changes are triggered, but mostly procedural or...
View ArticleTime to do better
The holidays are over. Time to put the rose-colored glasses back to the drawer. There is a whole real world out there that we cannot dismiss, basically because it feeds and shelters us. The good will...
View ArticlePhilippines – not for sale
Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is doing the wrong thing. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is hell paved with good intentions. It is not wrong to have Constitutional change but you...
View Article
