Archive - Commentary

Filipinos should pray and hope for a cardinal not because he is Filipino but because he can best lead the Catholic Church in the direction it is discerned to go…One who can guide the church on faith and morals, and can successfully meld the spiritual and political role of the pope who is also the head of a sovereign state.

Perhaps Imee and Sara deserve each other. Both failed to be amply rewarded for their contributions to Bongbong's election victory in 2022. In the midterms, the president and his allies have become their adversaries.

What could have gone wrong? With less than a month into the May 12 polls, can Imee still recover from her apparent missteps in the past months?

Imee Marcos, who had admitted to the torture and killing of Archimedes Trajano, was acquitted on a technicality, but not on her culpability for murder. She remains guilty in our public eyes.

The DDS have become clones of Duterte’s grandiose narcissism and congenital lying, a minority that is noisy, yet a minority nevertheless. They may not be a danger to immediate destabilization; they are a danger to truth telling. Kill the truth and the nation dies.

Roque will have to show more of his antics to the Duterte supporters, who still laugh at his clowning, to be relevant. But he will have a long difficult journey to redeem himself, if at all.

And if Marcos is indeed waging a “bloodless” drug war, how would he recognize the men and women in uniform who died in anti-illegal drugs operations?

Faced with tough challenges even before the trial begins, the Duterte camp is working to win the former president's case in the streets rather than through the legal channels, which they have long been trying to besmirch through black propaganda and other forms of disinformation.

Indeed, China couldn’t find a more useful and impactful set of proxies than the Dutertes in its geopolitical competition with the United States in the Asia Pacific in the same way that the Americans have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

If this was kidnapping, it was kidnapping in style. Convince the three ICC judges of Pre-Trial Chamber I that it was a crime.

What of irresponsible commentary? What of baseless opinion? There has to be a way to hold accountable those who live off political social media content yet feel little to no responsibility about the effects of their actions on their public.

The disinformation game plan now appears to have shifted to undermining the ICC, linking it to the leftist groups in the Philippines, and questioning its objectivity to destroy its credibility.