Lost all of Tuesday this week to the Senate.
The day started with news of Senate Resolution 388 affirming and supporting Martial Law as declared in all of Mindanao by President Duterte. What we knew was that 15 Senators were signing the resolution, excluding the Senate minority of five people – Bam Aquino, Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Kiko Pangilinan, and Antonio Trillanes – and Grace Poe and Chiz Escudero whose names weren’t on the released copy of the resolution. (more…)
Someone should tell the President to stop talking, and for his communications team to take control. Because the crisis in Marawi has revealed that he is preconditioned, at the worst time, to say the worst things.
It doesn’t matter if he’s here to begin with, or he’s arriving from a foreign trip. It doesn’t even matter that he has heard the public outcry against the Martial Law declaration, the fears that have been in the newspapers, on social media, out on the streets. He says what he wants. No one stops him.
Right there is why he is the worst leader to have at a time like this. There is no sense of control. No sense of order. There is no sense that he knows what he’s doing. And it gets worse. (more…)
It is clear that while we might laugh at the people behind Presidential Communications, and cannot even begin to imagine what it now becomes given the appointment of un-credentialed, anti-facts Mocha Uson; and while we might scoff at the social media army that are the ka-DDS – Duterte devotees – with an axe to grind against mainstream media, facts, data, and investigative journalism; here we are at a point when a Philippine representative – a Senator at that – can face the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and declare with a straight face that there is no new spate of killings under the Duterte administration, and that the international attention is all the fault of mainstream media’s coverage, that has bloated the number of dead, and has equated these killings with the drug war the President holds closest to his heart. (more…)
The Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News website came out with an interesting piece about the state of discourse in the Philippines given mainstream media on the one hand, and the rise of fake news as propaganda on the other. Written by Senior Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, it had as headline a quote from Rappler’s Maria Ressa, saying that “Democracy as we know it is dead,” which first made me imagine that the article was going to talk about the urgent concerns of summary executions on the streets and drug-related deaths, or the continued control by big business, oligarchs, and feudal lords over government despite a President who seems to stand squarely for the people (if / when his pronouncements hold and given his pro-people appointees), or even just the continued verbal assault against free speech from the President and his men.
Instead Ressa – and this article – were referring to the death of democracy … in relation to fake news and people like Mocha.
Yes, I’m as stunned as you are. (more…)
If there’s anything that’s been absolutely fascinating watching the proceedings for the confirmation of Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Gina Lopez at the Commission on Appointments, it’s how that long list of oppositors have come together solely to discredit her by misinforming the public and evading culpability for the mining crisis.
Mining misinformation
Mining companies and their advocates and employees want us to forget things. For two days last week, we watched miners and mining interests falling all over themselves trying to make us forget irresponsible mining’s destruction of the environment, displacement of communities, and militarization of sitios and barangays.
So instead of talking about that, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) insists that Lopez is “someone who does not believe in the Constitution’s mandate for the State to undertake the exploration, development, and utilization of natural resources, and as such, has put us, government’s partners in mineral development, at a quandary” (Feb 9 Statement). (more…)