GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay For more than five years, ordinary citizens had to contend with the egregious display of officious behavior by some of our public officials. From the highest ranks of leadership down to the second and third tiers of the bureaucracy, the space...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay By the time this column sees print, Metro Manila would have been under Alert Level 4 for one week. An official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) described the situation over the weekend as “good,” but his...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Businessmen by nature are not prone to criticize a sitting administration on every matter involving national policy. But it took a policy gaffe of epic proportions, one with far-reaching consequences on the economy and the livelihood of...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Looking back, it would be difficult not to feel a sense of frustration, even anger, at the many opportunities that were missed or ignored by government that could have made a difference today. No amount of feigned exuberance or managed events...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay For most economic experts, the Philippines has yet to break out of the phenomenon known as “jobless growth.” If there were jobs created from the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) boom, for example, these were jobs in urban areas...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay A devastating super-typhoon ravaged the country last week, narrowly sparing Metro Manila but leaving a wake of destruction in large parts of Bicol. Not only did it displace thousands of families, it also battered the region’s agricultural...
Former Vice President Jejomar Binay GOVERNANCE MATTERS Ever since the government placed Metro Manila and major urban centers under a lockdown, our people have been living in a state of constant fear. The fear is real, not existential. It is brought on by economic uncertainties and the day-to-day...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS The government’s communications office has shared, on several media platforms, the contents of the National Action Plan (NAP) against COVID-19. The acronym could not have been badly done. But that is the least of my concerns. The NAP may be diplomatically described as ambitious...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Normally, news of a record-breaking increase in the number of patients who have recovered from the coronavirus would have been greeted with jubilation. Instead, the Department of Health (DOH) found itself fending off criticisms that it was fiddling with the numbers after it...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Malacañang has clarified a controversial statement from the Interior Secretary that policemen will be conducting a house-to-house search for persons infected with the coronavirus. No, it will not be a police-led search, but one to be led by health authorities accompanied by the...