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...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar It has been almost 7 months since government imposed a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was March 15 when a General Community Quarantine (GCQ) was first implemented. Since then we have experienced ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine),...
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina That one in every three Filipinos went hungry last month—and is probably experiencing hunger up to this time—is horrifying, to say the least. The alarming hunger rate of 30.7 percent, affecting 7.6 million families in the country, has...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House In our previous column, we discussed our founding and launching in Manila in September, 2000, of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), to serve as a forum for dialogue, understanding, and cooperation on issues...
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....
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina If anything can go wrong, it will. The essence of Murphy’s Law might seem all too real with just a few days to go before basic education classes in our public school system are set to open amid the swirling perfect storm of the coronavirus pandemic....
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House (Remarks of former Speaker Jose de Venecia, c o-chairman of the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace and special envoy of the Philippine President to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and for Intercultural...
Former Senate President Manny Villar Of Trees And Forest Another casualty in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is our formal education system. The month of June every year is usually the time when millions of Filipino students troop back to their schools and learn. But because COVID-19 prevents any...
Former Senator Atty. Joey Lina FINDING ANSWERS Restricting access to the Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) of government officials is against the Constitution and the implementing law passed in 1989 when I was a member of the Eighth Congress. I need to stress the point amid...
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...
PEACE-MAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. Former Speaker of the House Today marks the 20 th anniversary of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), which we founded and launched here in Manila on September 17-20, 2000, to serve as a forum for dialogue, understanding, and cooperation...
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...
