Category Archives: Columns

THE SUPREME Court is once more embattled. This time, the battle relates not just to the wisdom of its decision. This time, it seeps to the very ability and integrity of the Court to write its judgments. A group of litigants is accusing it of plagiarism and of misusing the allegedly plagiarized materials to support the opposite of what the plagiarized items were intended to uphold. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—Tomorrow, the nation’s eyes and ears will be focused on President Aquino’s first State of the Nation Address (Sona). With a landslide electoral mandate and a stratospheric 88 percent approval rating in the latest SWS survey, P-Noy will be cheered not just in Congress but everywhere else in the country and in this planet. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—In his State of the Nation Address, President Aquino did not define his relations with the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, he hot-buttoned several topics that will inevitably involve our judiciary, like extrajudicial killings, tax evasion, the witness protection program, “wrongdoings committed in the last six years,” etc. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—One sure way of catching big-time grafters is by tracing their loot, and then inquiring into and/or freezing their ill-gotten bank deposits. To achieve this goal, Congress approved the Anti-Money Laundering Act (Amla). Unfortunately, the Supreme Court recently defanged the law partially by requiring that, before issuing bank inquiry orders, courts must first notify the depositors. This is equivalent to telling a thief to hide his loot lest the police discover and seize it. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—The recent controversy on the power of the president to appoint a chief justice during the ban on midnight appointments focused public attention on the Supreme Court. Yet, the Court remains the most mysterious among major government agencies. Save in a few high-profile cases, the public discovers a case only after a judgment is issued. Unlike the trial courts where the litigants and the public can monitor hearings, the high court’s processes are not generally known. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—In three days, at high noon of June 30, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will end her term. Peacefully and constitutionally, she will hand over the reins of government to President-elect Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III who, at the same instant, will take his oath of office at the Luneta Grandstand before Supreme Court Justice Conchita Carpio Morales. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—Many are jockeying for the choicest positions in the incoming government. These job aspirants should however realize that it would not be easy to serve in the Cabinet of President Noynoy Aquino. To live up to the high expectations of our people, P-Noy—I think—will want his official family to be, like him, worthy of the public trust. Because he promised to hold Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her officials accountable for their alleged wrongdoings, he will predictably want his own subalterns to pass a very high standard of accountability and transparency. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—The first order of business when President-elect Noynoy Aquino begins his term on June 30 is to inventory all the problems he would inherit from the current regime. “I want to emphasize that the wrong identification of the problem leads to the wrong solution,” he auspiciously declared during his first press conference upon being proclaimed by Congress last June 9. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—Noynoy Aquino’s mantra of “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” captured the collective longing of our nation. It also sets out in simple, understandable language the program of government of our new leader, and the standard by which he and his government would be judged. Continue reading →

MANILA, Philippines—Our people handed Noynoy Aquino the most overwhelming mandate since our present Constitution took effect in 1987. They opted for a peaceful transition of power, no longer by staging mammoth street rallies, but by rolling a tsunami of votes that could not be stopped by cheating, computer glitches, human errors, carelessness and logistical lapses. They invented a new form of People Power to reshape the Philippine landscape. Continue reading →