Author, Development Worker, Netrepreneur
In this digital age, information can be transmitted from one person to another in an instant, with a few presses and clicks on the screen of a gadget; that same information can be shared by practically everyone in the planet who has access to the internet. The government therefore serves the public well by uploading…
That once-in-every-three-years break is behind us and, as presiding officers of legislative bodies call it after a break, “session is resumed.” For the executives, it might as well be “work is resumed.” By now, the winners of the just-concluded elections could be in the middle of preparations to assume their respective posts, staring at the…
It was good news for the Philippines—and words of commendation are in order for its economic managers—when Standard & Poor’s (S&P) raised the country’s credit rating a notch from “BBB” to “BBB+” the other week. The closest meaning lay people may think about a credit rating is ability to pay—that is, a higher credit rating…
THE latest Pulse Asia survey on senatorial candidate preferences, conducted April 10 to 14 — or one month before the elections on May 13, 2019 — ranks the top 12 candidates in this order: 1. Cynthia Villar, 2. Grace Poe, 3. Lito Lapid, 4. Pia Cayetano, 5. Bong Go, 6. Sonny Angara, 7. Bong Revilla,…
QUITE a startling quote—Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin on Twitter: “… Every country can speak whatever is on its mind. What [China] says should not determine foreign policy but it should inform the national budgetary process that we gotta stop throwing money at poverty and throw it at weaponry….” He was reacting to Sen….
THE idea sells, as shown by how governments and funders are buying it. But how is the public supposed to profit from it? Community participation is known by many other names (citizen participation, collective action, collective governance, etc.) and defined in many ways. One of the more commonly used definition recognizes it as “a social…
IN a little more than a month’s time, Filipino voters will again troop to polling places to select their representatives in government. The candidates, even before the official campaign period started, have fanned themselves out in the hustings, megaphones in hand — figuratively and literally speaking, all in an effort to try and catch everybody’s…
(Note: published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 24 November 2019) When we earn less than what we need to spend, what we do is borrow money. The “we” can apply to individuals, to corporations, or to sovereign countries or governments. Often—for governments especially—borrowing money is not a problem. They borrow money to pay for…
In a 1963 song titled “Blowing in the Wind,” Bob Dylan asked simple, yet hard, questions: How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand? How many times must the cannon balls fly, before they’re forever…
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