In the News.

Numerous motions filed by lawyers of the accused Ampatuans had stretched the pace of the trial interminably. By 2013, they had filed nine motions for the judge to recuse herself…

The Ampatuans were Arroyo’s anointed lieutenants in ARMM, their alliance built largely on largesse. But the cash bonanza that Maguindanao secured from Arroyo failed dismally to…

Until they were charged with the murder of 58 persons on Nov. 23, 2009, the Ampatuans lived in mansions, traveled with a retinue of armed escorts in a convoy of black SUVs, flew…

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…

At least one in five victims of drug-related killings in Metro Manila in 2016 and 2017 were beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), our field and database…

President Duterte has appointed a new election chairman and three commissioners — all of them from Mindanao. By 2022, Comelec will be run entirely by Duterte’s appointees. Mostly…

The procurement woes of the Comelec in the May 2019 elections had a backstory in an audit report the year prior. It continues to pay monthly rental for warehouse services without a…

Problems with procurement, logistics, supply chain management, tight implementation schedules, and bad — really bad — project management. A series of unfortunate events turned the…

Across the Philippines’ 81 provinces, from 30 to over 50 percent of voters failed to vote for party-list groups in May 2019. Many voters missed the names of party-list groups…

Secure and digital — two words that spell out what SD cards should exemplify. But in the May 2019 elections, 4,650 SD cards of the 85,769 units deployed were found to be defective…

Avoidable delays in the procurement of goods and services; the election calendar revised four times; wasteful spending on machines that conked out or were not used; massive…

It’s a case of two failed biddings, and then a third negotiated one. The procurement of ballot paper and marking pens as a bundled contract for the May 2019 elections was one that…

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…

VOTERS KEEN in assessing the fitness for office of the five candidates for President in the upcoming elections may want to look at the presidentiables’ political pedigree and blood…

IN A tightly contested election, every vote matters, and even a vote-poor province could mean success or defeat for a national candidate. But that momentary attention may not mean…

IN ORDER TO WIN ELECTIONS, national candidates need to court and earn votes in bulk. A candidate can do so by asking for endorsement from formation leaders and sectoral…

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…

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…