They, of all the people, know the true nature of scandal. Many of them have faced it; many have emerged unscathed. Some have gone into hiding, only to come back famous. Some have been accused, and even convicted, of the most vicious crimes, only to return to the highest echelons of power. The people, fickle as the Paris mob during the French Revolution, have spurned them, only to eventually welcome them with open arms.

IT WAS the Maguindanao Moro filmmaker Teng Mangansakan who alerted me to a forgotten past. Last August, Teng revisited the place that had become rather obscure in the Mindanao mind. It is called Malisbong, but few would want to remember the name, let alone inconvenience themselves with a Google map for a search. Even the remaining living survivors would rather blur their memories of a ghastly carnage that only men who don’t believe in human dignity can carry out without mercy.

The Philippines may revive a nuclear power plant that was completed 32 years ago but never switched on due to safety fears, the government said Wednesday.

The spokesman for new President Rodrigo Duterte said the government is considering brining the $2.3 billion plant into operation to meet the country's growing power needs, despite entrenched opposition from activists and environmentalists.

 

“WE LIVE by symbols.” We make meaning through them—we are homo significans.

The battle for the public meaning of the Libingan ng mga Bayani has now reached Padre Faura, threatening to become the first confrontation between the Duterte administration and the Supreme Court.

Rodrigo Duterte won the Philippine presidency in a blaze of hard-line rhetoric -- an outsider who will stamp out crime and corruption. But his power base is tied to the nation's oldest political camps, including that of ex-dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

It is so lamentable that while our Asean neighbors and the rest of the world are steadily climbing up the economic ladder and benefiting from growing political maturity, we in the Philippines have again to go through a hotly contested, divisive political exercise that seems to have brought out the worst in us and set us back as a people. Another revolution, peaceful or violent, is bruited about as a necessary evil or as a possible offshoot of the heated collision of views and interests engendered by this year’s elections.

The biggest lie foisted upon the Filipino voters this election is that the leaders we enthrone into government to manage our country’s affairs will change our lives.

This is not entirely true!

MANILA, Philippines – All six vice presidential candidates agreed that it is time to pass an anti-political dynasty law during the Commission on Elections (Comelec) debate on Sunday.

read more: http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/04/10/1571498/vp-candidates-agree-pass-anti-dynasty-law