HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz The 2021 budget for President Duterte’s anti-communist task force, known as NTF-ECLAC, is P19 billion, which some say is only a tiny fraction of the P4.5-trillion total national budget for next year. Many would argue it is a total waste of taxpayer money and clearly a...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Having dozed off a bit earlier than usual on Wednesday night, I woke up at around 2 a.m. of Thursday to haunting sounds of typhoon Ulysses’ howling winds. Like many others, it was nearly impossible for me to go back to sleep. The next few hours, we watched friends on Facebook...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz As I write this, it is still uncertain who between Joe Biden or Donald Trump won the Nov. 3 elections. Their leads in the remaining battleground states are shrinking. Third World countries are known to give delayed election results, but not the United States of America. But here...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Who wouldn’t sympathize with parents Francis and Relissa Lucena who went to the Supreme Court to beg that their daughter Alicia Jasper (AJ) Lucena, a full-time activist, be returned to them? As far as I know, this was the first such case that parents of an activist went to...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Actress Liza Soberano ain’t the first actress to approach Gabriela to talk on girls’ and women’s rights. And she won’t be the last. Founded in 1984 by the likes of Sr. Mary John Mananzan and Maita Gomez, Gabriela first standing up against the kleptocrat and brutal Marcos...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz By now, Reina Nasino and her baby River have become household names. An urban poor community organizer, Nasino, together with Bayan Manila campaign director Ram Carlo Bautista and labor advocate Alma Moran, was arrested in November, 2019, after the police raided the Bayan...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Two things workers are looking forward to at the end of each year are the 13th month pay and the Christmas bonus. And it seems about two million workers may not get any 13th month pay at all, if the Duterte government would have its way. The reason? Because of the pandemic. In...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz “Facebook, listen to me. If government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country. What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you cannot help us?” This was President Duterte’s reaction...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Many have practically given up on the perceived stupidity in social media and even of fellow Filipinos. Sometimes I can’t blame them for thinking that way. But the latest announcement of Facebook against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” should be helpful in clarifying the...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz The dumping of dolomite in Manila Bay and the President’s address this week failed to distract or stop an international news agency from reporting a new Duterte “legacy.” In a story read across the world, Agencia EFE reported: “Manila reached six uninterrupted months of...
Tonyo Cruz HOTSPOT More than a dozen national and international organizations are inviting everyone to participate in the September 14 Global Day of Action which raises the call “stop the killings in the Philippines!” The organizers say the September 14 worldwide mass actions wish to tell the...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz The pandemic and national public health emergency provide us an opportunity to make education relevant in solving our main problem today. But instead the government seems intent on giving more problems for students, teachers, and parents. There’s no debate that...
