THE TIDAL WAVE that swept Benigno Aquino III to the presidency in the May elections stopped at the floodgates of Congress.
The presidential election gave Mr. Aquino a landslide, but it failed to give the majorities to his Liberal Party (LP) that would enable him to deliver on his promises to liberate Filipinos from poverty and [...]

ILOILO CITY—As the World Cup fever nears its climax in South Africa, basketball-crazy Filipinos should know that they have a hero to inspire them to switch to football as a national passion.
And it’s not the great Pelé of Brazil, Argentinian legend Diego Maradona or the current world top player Lionel Messi, also of Argentina, or [...]

THE TEAM-UP OF SENATORS BENIGNO AQUINO III and Manuel Roxas II as presidential and vice presidential candidates, respectively, of the Liberal Party in the last election was an ambitious scheme to restore the two-party system of pre-martial law days.
The election results trumped this restorationist attempt to put back party discipline as a defining principle in [...]

Today this space gives way to the urgent statement of the Right to Know Right Now! Coalition on the Freedom of Information Act that we, those in the media especially, want raised from the dead. (Because of space limitation some lines had to be omitted). Dear readers, please be with us in this crusade.
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THE FIRST SKIRMISHES BETWEEN THE AQUINO administration and the media flared up on the first day after his inauguration on June 30, heralding an early end to the traditional honeymoon period during the first 100 days.
The tensions stemmed from President Aquino’s Memorandum Circular No. 1 that declared vacant as of last Wednesday the positions of [...]

The era of flogging to death the Arroyo administration came to an end on Wednesday with the inauguration of the hugely popular Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. The inaugural lifted the oppressive weight of belligerence that blighted the Arroyo regime.
During the past nine years, Arroyo-bashing has become a flourishing cottage industry in the Philippine media, which [...]

PRESIDENT BENIGNO AQUINO III RETURNED power to the sovereign people upon his induction into office on Wednesday.
“You are the boss, so I cannot ignore your orders,” he said in his Inaugural Address. “We are here to serve and not to lord over you. The mandate given to me was one of change.”
In a 23-minute speech [...]

THIS PIECE ENDS THE THREE-PART SERIES ON my interview with former Presidential Assistant for the Peace Process (PAPP) Annabelle Abaya and her disclosures on the alleged corruption that she discovered in the OPAPP.
Abaya served for eight months as the sixth PAPP. I don’t know Abaya personally. She is not a personal friend or acquaintance. I [...]

THE NEW CABINET THAT PRESIDENT-ELECT Benigno S. Aquino III will present to the nation at his inauguration today is an ill-conceived assortment of new faces and holdovers from the departing administration of President Macapagal-Arroyo. With this composition, the Cabinet does not represent a complete rupture from the past regime and is bound to disappoint those [...]

WITH A SAD FACE, almost frowning, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo bade farewell to the nation on Wednesday.
In a five-minute address on national television a week before she hands over power to President-elect Benigno Aquino III, she said, “I feel confident that we are leaving this nation much stronger than when I came to office, but I [...]