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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

BAGUIO CITY—Designed for 25,000 people in 1903 when the Philippine Commission declared it as the summer capital of the Philippines, Baguio is bursting at the seams, and is struggling to expand beyond its 49-sq km perimeter, sitting on a plateau that rises 1,400 meters, making it the coolest city in the country.
The Baguio Centennial Commission, [...]

Signs portend that the administration has entered into one of the most inauspicious periods to change the Constitution. I am not referring only to the unrest triggered by the fast-tracked House Resolution 1109 convening a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution, without the participation of the Senate.
The Catholic bishops have called upon their constituents to [...]

BAGUIO CITY—In less than three months, Baguio will celebrate its 100 years as a chartered city, swamped by the corrosive elements of urban decay and the ravages of environmental degradation.
In the countdown to the Sept. 1 festivities, elders are engrossed in planning the revival of the grandeur of Baguio beyond 2009, a city once described [...]