while elsewhere in the world the discussions for women’s day and women’s month 2016 have been on the level of celebrity women’s bodies and slutshaming, role models and raising our young girls, in the Philippines we have a government that cannot even pretend to know what women need, much less what we want. (more…)
we knew it was coming yes? i mean Manny Pacquiao was always coddled and forgiven, he could do no wrong. this is what we tend to do for anyone we declare hero. because in a nation in dire need of some good vibes, some wins in the midst of too many losses, we make heroes out of, and i paraphrase Pia Wurtzbach here: basketball stars, beauty queens, and boxers.
If there’s anyone that I am now afraid might win the 2016 elections—because who knows what kind of electorate we have at this point—it is Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
Yes, there are pros and cons for all the presidential candidates and the possibility that each will win. But what Duterte promises are such simple, commonsensical things. What he promises are things that all presidential candidates should be promising, and they should be promising it with a progam to back it up. A holistic take on peace and order and public safety that need not fall back on action star rhetoric, and need not mean committing every human rights violation imaginable. (more…)
It has been confusing to say the least. But also it has been quite fascinating, this whole case of Ducky Paredes versus the broadsheet Malaya.
Because it’s such a public display of what goes through the mind of a man who has been accused of plagiarism, and the kind of defensive stance he’s decided to take. How the decision to turn this story around — in fact get ahead of the story — and claim that one had been oppressed and un-paid, therefore that would explain whatever actions he was to be accused of.
To be accused of. Because in fact we heard about how things went down between Paredes and Malaya only at the point when the paper found the need to defend itself against Paredes’s accusations as posted on Facebook.
That’s the thing: we found out about the story when it was deemed over by Paredes — he was moving on to the next thing. So the loudest voice we’re hearing is his, not at all acknowleding the serious allegation and crime that is plagiarism. (more…)
The burden of the unexplained has fallen on Presidentiable Jejomar Binay, mostly because he declared his intention to run for President so early. This opened him up to the ongoing Senate Hearings that have villified him and evolved from the Makati City Hall Parking Building II to his alleged involvement in deals to enrich himself via the various posts he holds: from head of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines, to Housing Czar, to ex-Mayor of Makati. And so now there is nothing he might say that is not tainted by questions of graft and corruption, no matter how politically motivated these allegations are. And really, it would do the VP well to start answering these questions instead of brushing it aside and presuming that we don’t want answers. Let’s be clear about one thing: we want, and need, answers from him — and any Presidentiable — running in 2016. (more…)