Archive - Focus

By LUZ RIMBAN THE United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will subject the Philippine government to “a higher level of scrutiny” when it comes to protecting the rights of migrant workers, after the Philippines claimed to be a global “model” among countries sending out workers overseas. The UN OHCHR reviewed

By CAROLYN O. ARGUILLAS and ELLEN TORDESILLASMindaNews/VERA Files   GOVERNOR Datu Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) “encountered difficulties” with his United States visa and was held briefly when he arrived at the Los Angeles airport (LAX) with his family on April 26. But ARMM Solicitor General Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi denied reports

MANILA Judge Jorge Lorredo thinks it would be best if former presidential chief of staff Michael “Mike” Defensor dropped the perjury case he has filed against whistleblower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada Jr.. Defensor sued Lozada after the latter said he had been asked by Defensor to deny that he was kidnapped by government agents when he

By TESS BACALLA AS though curtailment of basic liberties and state-induced violence amid massive poverty are not enough, tens of thousands of people who suffered the wrath of the worst disaster to have hit Burma (officially called Myanmar) still feel a sense of palpable neglect by their ruling military junta. “No major rehabilitation efforts by

By CHIT ESTELLA ON the long black granite wall on the grounds of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani are 185 names of heroes and martyrs who fought the Marcos dictatorship. Some are well-known to the public; many are not. But all are bound by the fact that they had committed a great part of their

By GERMELINA LACORTE RETIRED Army general Jovito Palparan will be reinventing himself as a party-list representative in Congress, but his legacy of anti-communist crackdowns lives on in places like Compostela Valley, Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato provinces in Mindanao where peasant and human rights leaders are being killed as the government intensifies counterinsurgency operations. A

By JAN MARCEL RAGAZA and ALLIAGE MORALES ONE of the most common drugs sold over the counter is the headache and fever tablet paracetamol, which costs P2.74 in commercial outlets. At the government-run Botika ng Barangay (BnB), paracetamol costs just a fifth of that at only 50 centavos. Other drugs are as affordable to impoverished

By JAN MARCEL RAGAZA and ALLIAGE MORALESIF a minimum wage earner were to be stricken with diarrhea, relief can come cheap from the Department of Health’s Botika ng Barangay (BnB) outlets, where a 2-milligram capsule of generic loperamide would cost only P1.05.   The BnB price is vastly lower than what loperamide costs in commercial drugstores—P4.10

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS PEACE talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have been stalled for eight months now because the government panel wants a review of the way Malaysia has been facilitating the peace talks. Highly placed sources said the Philippine panel has raised issues over the presence of a Malaysian

By YVONNE T. CHUA THE Commission on Elections needed P14 billion for its operations this year, but the amount was reduced to only about one-third or P5.4 billion, after the Department of Budget and Management and the Office of the President finished reviewing its proposed budget. And since 1986, the Comelec has practically been indebted

By LUZ RIMBANPHNOM PENH—In a village 15 kilometers south of this city, tourists from all over the world arrive every day to pay their respects to the victims of Asia’s own holocaust, burning incense sticks, offering flowers, or simply gazing at the skulls piled 10 levels high inside a Buddhist stupa standing over what was

By TESS BACALLA RANGOON, Myanmar—Let it not be said that the month of March went by without the outside world taking a moment to remember Burma’s drawn-out struggle for freedom. March marks the commemoration of resistance movements in Burma or, as its ruling junta wants it called, Myanmar. It was on March 13, 1988 when

By YVONNE T. CHUA FOUR years after Mindanao journalist Marlene Garcia Esperat was gunned down on Good Friday inside her home in Tacurong City, her assassins have been convicted—but not the masterminds who have been identified and charged  in court but have yet to be arrested. This despite the issuance of arrest warrants against the

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS MALACANANG has not given up on charter change and has in fact sought the help of its erstwhile friend, former Speaker Jose de Venecia, in marshalling votes to support a House resolution that will move for Constitutional amendments without the participation of the Senate. De Venecia, representative of Pangasinan’s fourth district, revealed

IT was former police Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino who gave the order to “get” publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer, who was kidnapped along with his driver Emmanuel Corbito on Nov. 24, 2000 and found dead days later. A four-page affidavit executed on March 1, 2007 by former police Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao II, who will

By TESSA JAMANDRE PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Wednesday the Philippine Archipelagic Baseline law that excludes the disputed Kalayaan Island Group and Scarborough Shoal from the archipelagic baseline.  The new law, Republic Act 9522, instead classifies them as “regimes of islands.” (Download a copy of RA 9522) A  regime of islands is defined by the United

By LUZ RIMBAN   OMBUDSMAN Merceditas Gutierrez may have filed more cases than her predecessor, Simeon Marcelo, but she has focused on the small fry and ignored the big fish or those who really need to be punished to deter graft and corruption.   Marcelo told a gathering of students at the University of the

By TESSA JAMANDRE EXACTLY three years ago today, hundreds of soldiers of the Philippine Marines marched in full battle gear outside the Marine headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, defending their commandant who was then accused of mutiny. The soldiers and their officers said theirs was a legitimate cause: They were merely protesting what they said was

By TESS BACALLA THE lack of a formal access to information regime and a party-list election system that breeds cronyism and corruption in the political process are major challenges that continue to confront the Philippines. This, despite some impressive world-class anti-corruption safeguards such as formal “cooling-off” employment periods for senior officials leaving government. According to

By IBARRA C. MATEO AND YVONNE T. CHUA FOR many years, Chinese national Cai Qing Hai had been on the list of Asia’s “most wanted drug manufacturers and traffickers,” with law enforcers from three countries—the Philippines, China and Malaysia—hot on his trail. Cai was no ordinary drug dealer. He headed a transnational syndicate which Chinese

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS THE World Bank has in its possession documents of bribe payments to politicians in connection with public works projects it is funding in the Philippines. A report of the bank’s Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) on the collusion among contractors who bidded for the National Roads Improvement and Management Project (NRIMP) said

By YVONNE T. CHUA THE World Bank has identified at least a dozen stages in the country’s road projects, from procurement to payment, that are prone to corruption. The “key corruption risks” in infrastructure contracts are listed in the bank’s project appraisal document on the $232 million loan it gave last year to the Philippine

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS ONE year after he survived abduction by a government team, Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, a star witness in the aborted $329.5-million national broadband project, finds himself in a curious situation. He is in danger of being thrown to jail on charges of perjury and graft filed against him by persons involved in his

By YVONNE CHUA, IBARRA MATEO, LUZ RIMBAN AND ELLEN TORDESILLAS LAST Jan. 13, President Arroyo proclaimed herself the country’s anti-drug czar, stepping into the feud between the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice over the “Alabang Boys,” the three young men arrested and detained for illegal drug pushing and who allegedly tried