July 2012.

FELICIANO MENDOZA was enjoying semi-retirement in his hometown of San Rafael, Bulacan last September when he received a letter that jolted him from his life of relative calm.

DON’T GET mad. Sue. That’s what Feliciano Mendoza and three of his fellow former barangay captains decided to do after they said they found out their signatures had been forged for…

A NUMBER of local government units (LGUs) have joined the pork-barrel bandwagon and launched slush funds for their councilors. The funds usually come from the Local Development…

WITHIN six months after he took his oath in June 2010 as the country’s 15th Vice President, Jejomar ‘Jojo’ C. Binay, had two wishes fulfilled, with a lot of help from President…

IN THE last 23 months, a total of P5.78 billion of taxpayers’ money went to pork – or officially, the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) – to finance the pet projects…

AUCTIONS for civil-works contractors to carry out “hard” or infrastructure-related pork-barrel projects must be lonely affairs. There is only one bidder for each of the competitive…

THE OFFICIAL name of the pork barrel – Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF – should already make it obvious what it is truly intended for. Yet instead of primarily being a…

ON ANY given day, the corridors of the East Avenue Medical Center (EAMC) in Quezon City leading to the Medical Social Service are filled with patients and their relatives seeking…

HE IS still about to give his third State of the Nation Address next week, President Benigno Simeon ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III can already claim at least one historical distinction: he is…

A LONG and malleable list of projects that could serve both the welfare of “indigent” families and the political stock of lawmakers is enrolled in Republic Act No. 10155, the…

TIPO-TIPO, Basilan, August 2007: The province had lapsed into yet another one of its seemingly interminable wars after suspected Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Abu Sayyaf…

THE LONG road to peace takes a short detour to Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, this weekend as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) holds what it calls the…

MAINSTREAM MEDIA have oft portrayed them as belligerent, intransigent, even war-mongering. But when the negotiating panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) faced the…