The promise of K-to-12 was supposedly too nice to reject, and so the Aquino and Duterte regimes continued […]
Tag: philippines
With the release of the 19 mostly-injured, detained and falsely-accused workers workers, advocates and journalists — NutriAsia and […]
In an infographic titled “how to recognize fake news”, the Office of the Vice President itself became an […]
The hero’s burial for the remains of the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos — a project of President Duterte, with […]
After more than hundreds of millions of pesos worth of total ad spending that swamped us with countless […]
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte did not vote against the SSS pension increase bill. Actually, not a single congressman voted […]
This week, the state and our “national leaders” conveniently and cynically forgot. And so let’s remember and never […]
Neri Colmenares, three-term Bayan Muna Representative and House Senior Deputy Minority Leader, is running for senator under the […]
Prepared remarks delivered at the Kabataan Partylist national convention, on 28 Sept. 2015 at the Amoranto Theater, Quezon […]
Thanks to crowdsourced suggestions, here are 40 posters to show your stand in support of Lumads and to […]
Our Lumad kababayans need help — and understanding. Here is a Lumad 2015 Reader, which aims to gather […]
Metro Manila is back to normal, according to Mar Roxas after the controversial Iglesia ni Cristo demonstrations of […]
[UPDATE: The INC rallies are over. Metro Manila is back to normal.] Aug. 29, 2015 Ka Eduardo V. […]
Sa totoo lang, tuloy pa rin ang inspection, pagnanakaw at pambabastos ng Customs sa mga balikbayan box. Bakit? […]
For a metropolis with run-down trains, horrible traffic, and “choosy” taxi drivers, the app-based Uber and GrabTaxi services […]
No, the MRT is not owned by the government. It is owned by MRT Corp. in a Public-Private Partnership project […]
July 27, 2015, will just be another manic Monday. Workers, employees and students will be waking up very […]
(UPDATED AUG. 2, 2015) Defying the challenges of income inequality and awful quality of internet and mobile services, […]
Here are my prepared remarks and presentation for the meeting of the House Committee on Information and Communication Technology, held on May 20, 2015:
Honorable chair and members, good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to attend and speak at this meeting.
All the measures now being heard in this meeting deserve hearing, study, and approval by the committee, by the House and by the whole Congress:
- House Resolution 186 of Congressman Arnel Ty;
- House Resolution 630 of Congressman Terry Ridon;
- House Resolution 1012 of Congressmen Neri Javier Colmenares and Carlos Isagani Zarate;
- House Bill 2794 of Congressman Anthony Bravo and Cresente Paez; and
- House Bill 5331 of Congressman Winnie Castelo.
Individually and collectively, these measures tell the sad or anger-inducing or patience-snapping stories of many students, parents, workers, farmers, professionals, entrepreneurs, businessmen, or congressmen. If there’s one thing aside from terrible traffic that we all suffer from together, it is the dismal state of internet and telephony services in the country. No one is spared from these horrors that should be preventable and easy to solve.
Most of us have slippers, some even have more than one pair. They are mainstays in our homes. We wear them all year round, and we bring them when going out on vacation, here or abroad. Going to the beach or the provinces this summer is incomplete without our favorite slippers or flip-flops.
But we never imagined that making some of those slippers could be this deadly to workers.
72 people who worked for outrageously-low wages for slipper-maker Kentex Manufacturing Inc. died this week in a fire that gutted down the company factory in Barangay Ugong, Valenzuela City.
The execution was stopped and Mary Jane Veloso is alive today. This is the happy outcome after countless people in the Philippines, in Indonesia, and across the world never gave up and fought up to the last hour. These efforts paid off, with President Joko Widodo making the decision at the 11th hour to spare the life of Mary Jane.
Ordinary people, relatives of OFWs, former OFWs, public interest lawyers, migrant advocates, activists, professionals, students, and Filipinos and friends across the world all contributed to make this movement and campaign a success: It convinced the Indonesian president to do the right thing and helped make sure the Philippine government would act to defend the life of a Filipino citizen.
Quite interestingly, diehard supporters of President BS Aquino ushered in the commemoration of the 29th anniversary of 1986 People Power uprising by rehashing the discredited “Marcos pa rin!” battlecry into an Internet trending topic #NoynoyPaRin.
For a whole day, they convinced themselves that there’s no one else fit to lead the country at this time, except their idol. We don’t know what they smoked before and as they did it. But if they were aiming to change the topic of public conversations away from President BS Aquino’s command responsibility over the Mamasapano incident, let us tell them: Nice try.