THE YEAR was 1985 when I first watched the TV documentary on how the song, “We are the world,” was made, line by line, note by note, part by part. While watching the final version being sung by 45 pop artists, individually in parts and as a chorus, plus the images of hunger and poverty, [...]

THE LAST-MINUTE withdrawal of the Filipino partner of the Smartmatic consortium, which was awarded the contract for the full automation of the 2010 election, has threatened the collapse of the project, raising the nightmare of falling back to the generations-old manual voting system.
Taking the Commission on Elections and the consortium by complete surprise, Total Information [...]

IT’S TOO soon to forget that tampering with election results can bring disastrous consequences to dictatorial regimes.
As the Commission on Elections (Comelec) comes under increasing public pressure to install a fraud-proof automated vote count system, warnings have intensified that a fraudulent election in May 2010 could spark a revolution.
The warnings are not without empirical basis. [...]

THIS column was supposed to be on the 2009 World Food Summit and the human right to food but … that can wait.
I was stunned when I read on Tuesday the half-page obituary on the sudden passing of De La Salle Brother Ceci Hojilla. It had a big picture of him laughing. Cecilio Montelibano Hojilla [...]

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stirred a hornet’s nest when Cabinet proxies floated the trial balloon that she planned to run for Congress to represent the second district of Pampanga in the 2010 national election.
The revelation not only threw in disarray the newly formed merger of Lakas-CMD and Kampi, the President’s own party, but also prompted former [...]

TWO remaining icons of the 1986 People Power Revolution have opened heavy fire on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in an attempt to stop her political machine from clearing the way for returning her to power after she serves out her term in 2010.
They carried out their attack within the space of eight days. Former president Fidel [...]

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo embarked on Wednesday on a visit to Japan that will take her to Brazil in South America from June 22 to 25. This trip is the 21st foreign visit she has made during the past five years of her second presidency, from April 5, 2005, when she flew to the Vatican for [...]

THE OTHER day I went to see the movie “Kamoteng Kahoy,” which was directed by Maryo de los Reyes and written by Ricky Lee, both veterans and multi-awarded. I went because the movie was based on a real-life tragedy that happened in Mabini, Bohol, in 2005.
It is a good film to watch these days when [...]

Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman dropped a bombshell on June 12 when he said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had told close associates she was “definitely stepping down” in 2010 and would run for Congress to represent the people of Pampanga. The statement grabbed the headline from the Independence Day celebration in Koronadal City, South Cotabato. “This [...]

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—In a break with tradition, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stood history on its head by shifting the center of 111th Independence Day celebration to Koronadal City, South Cotabato, away from Imperial Manila, signaling the flow of political power to regional growth centers and her downgrading of Manila as a strategic political base.
The shift of [...]