Sidebar
by Avigail M. Olarte
IT SOUNDS like something out of the brain of Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, but it’s as local as ampalaya tablets: an online shopping cart for such things as a heart transplant coupled with a yoga retreat.
by Avigail M. Olarte
ZOE DE la Torre didn’t mind that her surgery at the plush, marble-floored St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City cost P700,000. Not even if she could have had the procedure in one of Italy’s government hospitals for free. As a permanent resident of Italy, where she has worked selling medical instruments for the last 25 years, she enjoys that privilege. But she says she would be undergoing a “very delicate” procedure, and she wanted to make sure she was comfortable.
by Vinia M. Datinguinoo
BREAST OR bottle?
That may seem a no-brainer to many, but it’s a question that’s still throwing mothers, activists, government officials, medical experts, milk manufacturers, and apparently even U.S. diplomats in the throes of deep distress. To think that two decades ago, health officials had considered the matter already settled with the passage of the groundbreaking Milk Code, which aimed to protect breastfeeding and regulate the promotion of breast-milk substitutes. Yet officials say that instead of seeing more mothers breastfeed, the opposite has been happening. And those who still breastfeed are doing so for shorter periods of time.
BUT not quite with the look that we wanted just yet, and it may take a few more weeks before this nth transformation of i Report is completed. We couldn’t wait, however, because while we may not be married to any format, we are certainly committed to our readers and to what we do. For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Overseas Filipinos
by Herbert Docena
BEIRUT — Miramar Flores stood on the ledge of her master’s second-floor balcony. As she tried to make up her mind — whether to stay on under the Israeli bombardment or to flee — it may well have occurred to her that it was a choice between death and death.
“If you don’t die from jumping, you die from nervousness,” recalls Flores, a 25-year-old domestic helper from Bacolod City. She chose to jump. She says that when she hit the ground, she thought it was the end. The pain in her legs assured her it wasn’t.
by Roel R. Landingin
BIG COMPANIES expect their income tax returns to be routinely checked by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). But firms that enjoy tax and duty exemptions granted by the Board of Investments (BOI), Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) and other investment-promotion bodies belong to a special category that tax examiners wantonly ignore.
by Roel R. Landingin
IT TAKES the tax bureau’s southern Makati district office, housed at the Atrium building along Makati Avenue, about a year to collect P13 billion in taxes. Just a few blocks away, another government agency, the Board of Investments (BOI), took just 14 working days to decide to grant the same amount in tax exemptions to two of the country’s most profitable companies — Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc.
by Yvonne T. Chua
TONIGHT (May 19) the board of trustees of the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) is scheduled to interview eight contenders for DAP president. But only one of the shortlisted candidates will show up, with the rest snubbing the meeting because, they said, the results of tonight’s board deliberation are “a foregone conclusion.”
The only one who will come for the interview is the candidate personally chosen by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: Antonio Kalaw, currently DAP senior vice president and corporate secretary. In an unusual show of defiance and protest, all the rest will boycott the event.
by Raissa Espinosa-Robles
THE FATE of present efforts to change the constitution now lies in the hands of the Supreme Court — much like how it was in 1973.
Back then, President Ferdinand Marcos managed to get the highest court of the land to endorse what was an anomalous ratification of a new charter he had tailor-made to suit his needs.
by Raissa Espinosa-Robles
THE ARROYO government’s campaign to change the constitution seems to be following a playbook written by a dictator. His name: Ferdinand Marcos.
In 1972, Marcos manipulated, bribed and intimidated key delegates of the Constitutional Convention to grant him extraordinary powers. He dangled a promise to cancel elections the following year and struck a deal with convention delegates that those who would vote “yes” to his extraordinary powers would automatically become members of an Interim National Assembly. He then set up “citizens’ assemblies” to ratify his constitution.
