THIS is a country where there’s always someone spoofing a president — dead or alive — on TV, during concerts, Halloween parties, and from time to time, at people power marches on Edsa.
There are a few who stand out, who have endured a revolution or two, and became icons. Willie Nepomuceno, Tessie Tomas, and Jon Santos have been around longer than some of the presidents and presidential wannabes (Cory, FVR, Erap, FPJ, GMA, Roco, Ping, Bro. Eddie, and Eddie Gil) they’ve emulated.
by Vernon R. Totanes
SUPPORTERS of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo spent more than P22 million in advertisements in major Manila dailies in the period of just three-and-a-half months since the “Gloriagate” crisis began.
But was it money well spent? Public-relations and advertising experts on both sides of the political divide agree that it is unlikely the ads changed many people’s minds. They were mainly a show of strength.
by Booma B. Cruz
POONA BAYABAO, Lanao del Sur — “Fernando Poe, Fernando Poe.” With clenched fists and his right hand raised, octogenarian Hadji Mohammad Monte repeated the name of the late action star like a mantra when asked whom he voted for in the last presidential elections. He insisted that Poe was number one among the residents of this town where the late king of Philippine movies was — and still is — very popular.
by Alecks P. Pabico
TOWERVILLE, San Jose del Monte City, Bulacan — Every day, around lunch time, hungry mothers and children hang around Nazaria Castillo’s carinderia in the hope of getting food. Castillo knows they have no money, and so she herds them inside her store and feeds them whatever humble meal she is selling that day.
Nightmare at Northrail
by Alecks P. Pabico
IMAGINE uprooting 40,000 families — twice the entire population of the municipality of San Juan, Metro Manila — and relocating them elsewhere.
By any stretch of the imagination, this would be a logistical and sociological nightmare. The financial cost alone would also be staggering. This is exactly what is happening in the government program to relocate those who will be displaced by the North Rail Project. The Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) estimates that the government needs to shell out at least P6.6 billion in resettlement costs, but it is not clear where this money is going to come from.
by Luz Rimban
WHILE CONGRESS is busy looking into allegations that jueteng lord Bong Pineda contributed P300 million to the Arroyo campaign, far less attention has so far been devoted to charges that the President’s biggest donor was actually the Filipino taxpayer.
As much as P5 billion from government coffers could have been used to promote Arroyo’s candidacy, PCIJ research shows. The Department of Agriculture (DA) was the biggest source of the funds — about P3 billion worth of DA funds was released mainly to pro-Arroyo local officials and congressmen from February to May 2004.
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| Posted Thursday, September 29th, 2005
by Luz Rimban
THERE ARE virtually no farms in Las Piñas, Parañaque, Quezon City and certainly not in Makati. Yet these overbuilt and densely-populated cities were among at least 100 congressional districts that, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA), needed P1.8 billion in farm inputs and implements in February 2004, just when the presidential campaign was kicking off.
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| Posted Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
Gloria's LobbyGate?
by Malou C. Mangahas
SINCE it assumed office in 2001, the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has spent at least $3.7 million or P208 million in eight multiple, loosely monitored, and largely secret consultancy contracts for eight US-based lobby and law firms.
The controversial agreement with the law firm Venable LLP is only the latest contract that Mrs. Arroyo had authorized her Cabinet deputies to sign in the name of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.
by Malou C. Mangahas
ON THE same day that she delivered her State of the Nation Address and summoned the nation to start “the great debate” on charter change, President Arroyo awarded a million-dollar lobbying consultancy contract to an American law firm to “secure grants and (US) congressional earmarks” for her initiative to “reshape the form of government…into a parliamentary federal system.”
Focus on the Filipino youth: The Lost Generation
by Alecks P. Pabico
I’M A CERTIFIED Nethead and I can get down and digital with the best of them. But Rochelle Lazarte and her five friends make me feel as ancient as a rotary phone. Formed only seven months ago, their barkada is basking in its newfound friendship that traces its beginnings — the same way that many relationships among young people are being born and nurtured today — in cyberspace.
