Archive - Commentary

There are things that you do knowing that its chance of success is not high but you do it because you know it’s the right thing.

The notes of Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio on Benham Rise is very useful as the 13-million-hectare undersea region east of Luzon is in the news with the disclosure last week by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana that Chinese survey ships have been spotted in the area last year.

In this Q & A, with Reporting ASEAN founder/editor Johanna Son, Malaysia’s MP Charles Santiago, head of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), argues that ASEAN’s record on pushing human rights has lagged way beyond the attention it gives to economic and business interests. ASEAN needs to adapt to the times – and outgrow habits that in the long run, threaten the contributions it has made the regional stability thus far, he says

Benham Rise is an underwater plateau that stretches from the coasts of Cagayan and Bicol up to approximately 300-350 nautical miles (nm) in the Pacific Ocean. A large part of this plateau is within the 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf of the Philippines.

Life is like a wheel. One moment you are up and the next moment you can be down.

However Malacanang tries to discredit SPO3 Arturo Lascañas explosive exposé about President Duterte’s direct role in the Davao Death Squad, it’s obvious that the President and his men are shaken.

Watching legislative hearings is bad for the health. You develop superiority complex and that’s not healthy.

It looks like Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano will finally be the foreign secretary come May when the one-year election ban for those who ran in the last elections would expire.

BANGKOK (Reporting ASEAN) - It is now possible to go by car in any weather from Yangon (the commercial capital of Myanmar and formerly known as Rangoon) to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam’s commercial capital, formerly known as Saigon) by the East-West Economic Corridor and its southern extensions. The 2,000-kilometre plus route connects the five mainland Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand, of which only the last is a founding member of ASEAN.

“There was death on Ash Wednesday” I like this lead by RG Cruz of ABS-CBN in his report about the approval of the death penalty bill by the House of Representatives

The ‘perya barker”act, in the words of Sen. Grace Poe, of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre at the government-organized Luneta rally last Saturday triggered responses from different personalities which make for amusing exchanges.

Last week’s smooth, relatively uneventful retreat by ASEAN’s foreign ministers appears to have put the grouping’s agenda on track for its 50th year, choosing to focus beyond the South China Sea disputes and set the stage for an April leaders’ summit that will put the spotlight purposefully on ASEAN’s golden anniversary.