PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House The killing last of week of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in the country’s capital Tehran has added fuel to the fire of tensions in the already precarious situation in the Middle East. We hope Iran, Israel, which is...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar Nelson Mandela, revolutionary, political leader, and former president of South Africa, once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” And I absolutely agree. I think that education is our most...
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina The one and only way to economic recovery for the Philippines is through government spending. This basic truth was pointed out by Marikina Rep. Stella Luz A. Quimbo, one of the most brilliant minds in Congress, who guested in my Teleradyo program Sagot...
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...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House In February, 2010, in Seoul, we proposed to then Foreign Minister Yu MyungHwan the establishment in Manila of a Philippines-South Korea University, following our much earlier discussions with then Korean Ambassador in Manila, HE Choi...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar It’s going to be a different holiday season this year. Countries around the world are grappling with a dilemma of whether to relax pandemic restrictions to allow people to celebrate the holidays. On one hand, there is fear that relaxing...
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 It appears irrelevant that the call was originally made not by UP by its affluent neighbor...
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina There’s both good and bad news concerning the much-awaited vaccine that is widely seen as humanity’s only way out of this crippling coronavirus pandemic. But let’s discuss the good news first. It’s certainly an “incredible milestone for...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House We sincerely thank God that at almost 84, the Lord has given us fair health and some residual energy. Before the onslaught of the global Coronavirus pandemic, which has harshly disrupted and claimed more than a million lives worldwide, we...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar As the nation continues to grapple with a pandemic that has affected more than 406,000 Filipinos and has claimed the lives of more than 7,700, a cavalcade of typhoons and severe tropical storms have battered our country in a span of weeks....
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina The trail of death and devastation in the aftermath of typhoons Ulysses, Quinta, and Rolly, the world’s strongest so far in 2020, has sparked calls for more decisive government action in coping with the crisis. “The glorification of resilience must...
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...
