PEACE-MAKER Russia’s discovery of a COVID-19 vaccine seems to provide light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. President Vladimir Putin has announced that the Russian-developed vaccine offers “sustainable immunity” against the coronavirus. He revealed that it was even administered on his...
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...
OF TREES AND FOREST Do you remember how you learned about the concept of Bayanihan in elementary school? I clearly recall—just like very adult Filipinos who attended basic education in the country—that image of people in a community helping their neighbor relocate by literally...
FINDING ANSWERS Despite all the lockdowns and stringent measures already laid out, how come we have not flattened the curve of the coronavirus that continues to spread widely? I dare say the fault lies in enforcement. And I say this based on my experience tackling the SARS epidemic in 2003 when I...
PEACE-MAKER As though economic crisis, mass demonstrations since last year resulting in the resignation of then Prime Minister Saad Hariri, military conflict with neighbor Israel, and battling coronavirus were not enough, Lebanon is now besieged by another humanitarian crisis following a gigantic...
OF TREES AND FOREST In my column last week, I discussed the kind of entrepreneurial mindset that will help us get through this pandemic and the economic downturn it has spawned. In this column, I will look at that same entrepreneurial mindset and how it can help us rebuild our economy after the...
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...
FINDING ANSWERS President Duterte’s swift decision to put Metro Manila and the provinces of Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, and Bulacan under the stricter modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) from Aug. 4 to 18 is a welcome development for our medical community. While it was short of the ECQ or...
PEACE-MAKER We wish to pay tribute to the late senator and foreign affairs secretary Raul Manglapus, whose 21 st death anniversary last July 25 we quietly commemorated. We were in Carmel, California in 1998, having accepted an invitation to speak at a forum organized by Paul Burgess Fay Jr. who...
OF TREES AND FOREST I was fortunate to have been given the opportunity to serve in both government and the private sector. After starting out as an entrepreneur early in life, I ventured into politics in 1992. I built and led my own business from the ground up. I was also able to assume leadership...
FINDING ANSWERS Former Senator Atty. Joey D. Lina With July being Nutrition Month, it is imperative to refocus attention on the gnawing hunger and malnutrition of impoverished Filipino children who are prone to more suffering as the coronavirus crisis rages on. Each day, around 95 children in our...
PEACE-MAKER Tomorrow’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) by President Rodrigo Duterte, his fifth, is both unprecedented and crucial in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, which, as of this writing, has infected more than 72,000 of our countrymen and claimed more than 1,800 lives, and...
