GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Recently, I was able to catch a portion of a talk show on cable television where the guest showed no compunction about his reckless behavior or reined in his self-praise. It was a wanton display of arrogance at a time when we should be...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Government officials should learn to speak with one voice. This is a basic communication principle that should have been in place nine months ago, when government, after much reluctance, acknowledged the existence of a health crisis. The number...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The secretary of justice, asked to comment about the resurgence of extra-judicial killings with lawyers as victims, admitted having difficulty in investigating and prosecuting the killers and the masterminds. He described the killings as...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay A threat to withhold funding for the University of the Philippines (UP) has been made apparently in response to a call for an “academic strike.” It appears irrelevant that the call was originally made not by UP by its affluent neighbor...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay As I write this column, Typhoon Ulysses has transformed Cagayan and Isabela, the home province of my mother, into an ocean of tears and tragedy. Prior to its arrival, the typhoon ravaged towns and cities already reeling from the devastation...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The National Security Adviser, who is also the head of the government task force against communism, attempted last week to contain the self-inflicted damage wrought by his overzealous spokesperson’s red-tagging of several celebrities by...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay In the 1950s, the United States Senate was the venue for anti-communist witch hunts conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The senator whipped up public hysteria and fed on Cold War paranoia by alleging the existence of a massive communist...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay It would be foolhardy for anyone to think that the congressman from Taguig, after being unceremoniously ejected from his once lofty position as speaker of the House, would suddenly become a paragon of quiet humility and contrition. He is...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The prestigious John Hopkins University has released a list of countries with the most COVID-19 cases. The Philippines, with over 300,000 cases and new cases being recorded in the thousands daily, ranked 20th in the list. Another list by a...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The speaker appears to have managed to quiet down the recent unrest among his peers in the House of Representatives, but not without again laying bare – like a gaping wound on our body politic – his long-held obsession with power and pork....
Former Vice President Jejomar Binay GOVERNANCE MATTERS As we marked last September 15 our sixth month under a government-imposed lockdown, the media reported that the Palace gave itself a grade of 85 percent for its handling of the pandemic. It was the equivalent of a “very good” grade, said...
Former Vice President Jejomar Binay GOVERNANCE MATTERS The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), run by economists who are by training more circumspect with their projections and parsimonious with hyperboles, sees poverty and unemployment further worsening next year. The takeaway is...
