gloria macapagal arroyo.

Two days after the Ampatuan Massacre occurred on Nov. 23, 2009, a team of journalists, lawyers, and a forensic expert flew to the site to extend immediate humanitarian assistance…

SOCIAL WATCH Co-Convener Marivic Raquiza considers it “very one-sided” that the government monitors compliance by beneficiaries – the so-called demand side – of the Conditional…

SHE HAD neither bought a lotto ticket nor joined a TV game show. But Marissa felt like she won the jackpot anyway late last year, when her family was chosen as one of the…

MOSTLY old, mostly male, mostly born and bred in imperious Luzon and all schooled in imperial Manila. Two in every three were jurists and bureaucrats in their previous lives, and…

IN A way, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Cabinet toward the end of her regime could be described as “star-studded.” Arroyo, after all, had a habit of appointing retired star-rank…

FOUR anti-graft czars and 22 years since its birth on Nov. 17, 1989, the Office of the Ombudsman of the Philippines has failed to strike fear in the hearts of crooks, or summon…

BENIGNO Simeon ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III became the Philippines’ 15th president on June 30, 2010 or exactly 70 days ago, triggering a contagion of hopefulness among Filipinos. He…

IT WILL be his first official trip overseas as the country’s chief executive, but President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III has little reason to look forward to his upcoming visit to…

LAWYERS at the Palace have been burning the midnight oil scrutinizing nearly a thousand appointments made by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in various government agencies…

SHE ALREADY created a furor with her “midnight appointments,” or appointments made on the eve of an election ban. Yet a month after the May 10, 2010 elections, then President…

Barring last-minute surprises in the election count, the Noynoy-Nognog tandem will lead the next casting at Malacañang Palace in the next six years, according to funny-boned…

THE PERSISTENTLY unpopular President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may be proof that sometimes advertising just doesn’t work. In early April, or just a little more than two months before…

THE GOVERNMENT seems to want your ear really, really bad that in 2009 alone, its agencies, along with various public utilities, placed tri-media ads totalling P6.34 billion in ad…

IT IS now so obscure that many government officials don’t even know what it is, but there was once a time when the APO Production Unit, Inc. seemed destined for great things. ‘APO’…

IN THE SUMMER of 1977, four young students graduating from the Ateneo de Manila high school applied for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program, hoping to become Air…

IN THE nation’s third poorest province, Maguindanao, the poverty incidence is a staggering 62 percent – five of every six residents live on less than a dollar a day. And by all…

THE LAW on campaign finance is firm and clear. It sets firm caps on how much a candidate may spend, who may donate and receive money on his or her behalf, and what types of…