Archive - Focus

READ VERA Files’ real-time account of former President Corazon Aquino’s funeral, from the morning requiem mass to the nine-hour funeral procession and finally to the interment at the Manila Memorial Park.  The blog contains text, photos and videos of VERA Files writers and “tweets” from selected sites.  It logged a total of 14 hours, from

A PERSON of courage in adversity and a woman of humility when she gained power. That was how former President Corazon C. Aquino was as sister, friend, boss and mother. As they struggled to hold back their tears, family members, friends, former appointed officials and a security aide of Mrs. Aquino described the woman who

By TESSA JAMANDRE NOW it can be told. On Feb. 24, 2006, on the 20th anniversary of People Power, former President Corazon Aquino was supposed to have linked arms with both the forces that were loyal to her and had threatened her government during the 1989 bloody coup attempt. Aquino, with Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim

TWO children of former president Ferdinand Marcos paid their respects to his successor and once bitter enemy, Corazon Aquino, as she lay in state at the Manila Cathedral this afternoon. Marcos’ eldest daughter, Imee, and only son, Ferdinand Jr. (Bongbong), arrived at 3 p.m. as Aquino’s family and friends, as well as her former cabinet

YELLOW confetti again rained in profusion over Ayala Avenue in Makati this noon as the truck bearing the body of former President Corazon Aquino traversed the busy street in the country’s financial district that led the fight against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the twilight years of his presidency. About 25,000 people (according to police

By LUZ RIMBAN IF Filipinos are inconsolable over former President Corazon Aquino’s death, that’s because to them she was “Inang Bayan” personified. Inang Bayan was the role “Tita Cory” played in the big production called Philippine politics, said television and movie director and scriptwriter Joey Reyes, in the documentary “Papogi: The Imaging of Philippine Presidents,”

CORAZON Cojuangco Aquino, the Philippines’ 11th president, died Aug. 1, Saturday, at 3:18 a.m. She was 76 years old. Her son, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, announced her death from cardiac arrest a year after being diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Aside from being the country’s and Asia’s first woman president, Mrs. Aquino made history

By ELLEN TORDESILLASEXACTLY six years ago on Monday, July 27, Army Capt. Arlene Trillanes turned on her television set to see some 300 military officers and enlisted men taking over the Oakwood Premier Hotel in Makati. Fear struck her heart when she saw her husband, Navy Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV, leading the band

By YVONNE T. CHUA THE winner of the government’s P7.2 billion automated elections project will get close to P3 billion, or 40 percent of the contract amount, even before it delivers all the 82,200 counting machines to be used in the May 2010 elections. Under the contract signed on July 10, the Commission on Elections

REMITTANCES, investments, production all falling down. The Philippine economy is facing its worst decline in more than 20 years, with production, investments and even overseas remittances falling in the first quarter of 2009. In its midyear economic and political report, Ibon, a private think-tank group, said the economy, as measured by its gross domestic product

By TESSA JAMANDRE SIXTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD Kumiko Nakasone last saw her Japanese father at the close of World War II. The family was separated when her father and brother were repatriated to Japan shortly after, leaving her and two other siblings behind. Nakasone’s father is now dead, but Nakasone has always yearned to see her brother and

By YVONNE CHUAUNLIQUIDATED cash advances of national government agencies and local government units have ballooned to P10 billion, prompting the Commission on Audit to restore the pre-audit of select government transactions starting next month. The COA said it was restoring the practice of pre-audit in a bid to check what it described as the “rising