Freedom of Information.

From Global Investigative Journalism Network Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present this transcript of the keynote speech by Columbia University’s Sheila Coronel at the 2016…

THROUGHOUT THE 24 years of elections in the Philippines’s 20 provinces with the most number of registered voters, family names on the ballots seem to keep repeating themselves, the…

PCIJ’s Wealth Check Reports on the Candidates for President: * JEJOMAR BINAY, United Nationalist Alliance * MIRIAM DEFENSOR-SANTIAGO, People’s Reform Party * RODRIGO DUTERTE…

JEJOMAR ‘JOJO’ BINAY marked his Year 1 in public office as OIC (officer-in-charge) mayor of the country’s premier financial district, Makati City, in 1989 with a net worth of only…

MIRIAM DEFENSOR-SANTIAGO’s first SALN on record with PCIJ was filed for the year 1994. In it she declared a net worth of P48 million. Nearly two decades later, in 2014, she…

IN HIS latest SALN for the year 2015, presidential frontrunner and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte declared a net worth for 2015 of only P23,514,569.93, or a slight…

ACCORDING to the few SALNs she had filed in her short stint in public office – as chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) in 2010-2012, and…

MANUEL ‘MAR’ ROXAS II, scion of the old-rich Araneta and Roxas clans, is the wealthiest of the five candidates for president, according to the 14 annual SALN filings he had…

THREE OF THE SIX candidates for vice president have released copies of their respective Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) for 2015 within 24 hours upon receipt…

AMONG THE 802 unopposed candidates for the 2016 elections, a few stood out not just because their surnames sounded familiar, but also because of the frequency in which these kept…

SEN. GRACE POE released this morning, May 4, a copy of her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) for 2015 in which she declared a net worth of P89,118,760.02, a…

THE IDEAL situation in any election is that two or more candidates fight for a seat, and they earn the votes through the merit of their platform, their track record, and their…

SO HOW MUCH is he really worth? According to his 2015 Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth or SALN, presidential frontrunner and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte has…

CITIES ARE where all kinds of opportunities can be found – and, unsurprisingly, where a lot of voters in this country happen to be. As of records from the 2013 elections, the top…

EVEN WITH just part of their campaign spending captured by Nielsen Media’s monitoring of their political ads from Feb. 9 to the end of March, at least two presidential and two…

THEY MAY be fewer and weaker but their right to vote is just as important as that all voters share. Their sorry situation is a context for the May 2016 elections. In large measure…

ALMOST LIKE A PLAGUE, the political ads of four candidates for president, five for vice president, and two dozen other candidates for senator and local posts have started to…

TWO COMPANIES have done what they shouldn’t and couldn’t have. First, they separately paid for political ads for and against two candidates in the May 2016 elections. They should…

Last of Three Parts CAN we trust them with the public purse? At the rate they are splurging billions of pesos on political ads, with nothing or little to show in their asset…

Second of Three Parts POLITICAL ADS are a bundle of the good, the bad, and the ugly. As candidates in the upcoming elections continue to pour considerable amounts of money into…

First of Three Parts TO THE LAST, they sing the same song: They hate corruption. They love the poor. They mean well. They are true. They are good. They are pure. Or at least that…