PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House Less than two weeks into our government’s nationwide inoculation against COVID-19, we are once again experiencing an alarming spike in new coronavirus cases in our country. More than 4,500 daily infections have been recorded on March 12,...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay It is difficult to accept even at face value the claim of the author of the amendments to the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act that the constitutional right of an accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty remains intact and respected...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar The first anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown is upon us. It’s an anniversary that doesn’t inspire any celebration. But it should prod us towards introspection and assessment. Looking back, what were the things we should have done...
Finding Answers Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina It’s now exactly a year when in-person learning inside schools abruptly came to a halt starting in the National Capital Region and ultimately throughout the Philippines as the coronavirus pandemic raged. Plans for localized and limited face-to-face...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House We join Roman Catholics around the world in praying for the safety of Pope Francis who boarded his plane for Iraq last Friday, indeed a historic but dangerous journey in the midst of the raging global pandemic and the recurrent violence in...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Seniors officials of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) appeared before media a day after the widely reported shootout between policemen and anti-drug agents to confess the obvious – they...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III was quoted last week as saying that “aside from our health-care workers, we will prioritize vaccinating our economic front-line workforce.” Sec. Dominguez, who heads President Rodrigo Duterte’s...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House As of this writing, 600,000 doses of Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccines donated by China are scheduled to arrive in Manila today, as announced by Malacañang a few days ago. With the availability of the vaccines, our government can already kick...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Most observers have attributed the unprecedented rise in hunger and poverty to the administration’s monumental failure to respond quickly to the threat of COVID-19 and its reliance on strict lockdowns that grounded the economy for months....
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina Even though tomorrow’s commemoration of the 1986 People Power Revolution might be subdued as what has been happening these past few years, it’s my firm belief that never shall the EDSA spirit be lost on Filipinos. Indeed, no matter how that...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House (Remarks delivered at the Special Video Conference of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties Women’s Wing, February 24, 2021, Wednesday.) Iconic women leaders in global politics In recent years, many iconic women...
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...
