The front-page picture of empty meat market stalls in this newspaper’s Tuesday issue recalled to mind the same scene I witnessed in a market somewhere in China 50 years ago. A group of Filipinos headed by Charito…
The University of the Philippines community is gearing up to fight a threat to its academic freedom with the unilateral abrogation by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana of the Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of National Defense…
You’ve heard the saying, Reader: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, the Bulacan International Airport, aka New Manila International Airport, aka San Miguel Aerocity, may be a good example. You remember when Ramon…
Remember Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr.’s charge that the Philippines had the opportunity (he arranged it) to contract with Pfizer for the delivery of vaccines as early as January this year—and that the government flubbed it? Somebody…
Make no mistake, Reader. Democracy has been under vicious assault in the United States since before November. Last Wednesday’s mob march on the US Capitol was just the latest, egged on by the prime instigator, in a…
A Healthy and Happy New Year to you, Reader. My wish — no, my prayer — is that in the next 363 days of 2021, when we are faced with decisions, no matter how large or how…
Reader, how was your Christmas celebration? How did COVID-19 make it different from your previous Christmases? I am almost ashamed to say that for me and mine, there wasn’t that much difference. Simbang Gabi, for example, I…
The recent brouhaha about somebody “dropping the ball” with regard to getting 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by end January hasn’t gotten the public attention it deserves. Maybe this is because government authorities—the executive, the…
The World Bank launched earlier this week its Philippine Economic Update, entitled “Building a Resilient Recovery.” One of its key findings was that the country’s GDP will likely shrink by about 8.1 percent in 2020. That implies…
How is it that a country like the Philippines, “which by all the usual metrics of having ‘strong macroeconomic fundamentals’ pre-COVID-19, both relative to its own past history and relative to its regional neighbors, would end up…
What has the country lost to COVID-19? This column will not deal with the number of deaths (8,242), or the number of cases (424,297), or translate these into all sorts of indicators, like number of work days…
Reader, I have three takeaways from the results of the US elections, and I wonder whether they are the same as yours. My first takeaway is the question: After four years of Trumpian lies and abuse of…
