Archives for the ‘On Distant Shore’ Category

Remember EDSA

By Val G. Abelgas • Mar 1st, 2010 • Category: On Distant Shore

It is infuriating that 24 years after the Filipino people brought down a dictatorship and restored democracy, some military personnel act like martial law was never rejected resoundingly by the militants at EDSA. It seemed generations ago when the brutal soldiers of the Marcos dictatorship terrorized the Filipino people, and yet from time to time [...]



Something sinister about Arroyo ads

By Val G. Abelgas • Mar 1st, 2010 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
                There’s more than meets the eye in the two-page advertisements that the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) has been running in three major newspapers in the Philippines heralding the alleged accomplishments of the Arroyo administration in the economy, social development, public works, law and order, job generation, agriculture, energy, environmental protection and digital infrastructure in [...]



One man standing

By Val G. Abelgas • Feb 15th, 2010 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
                In the first week of January, the Commission on Population estimated that by year’s end, the Philippines’ population would reach the 94-million mark. It warned that the additional two million Filipinos would mean two million more mouths to feed, two million more heads to give shelter to, two million more to educate, and two [...]



Replacing Chief Justice Puno

By Val G. Abelgas • Feb 1st, 2010 • Category: On Distant Shore

At about this time last year, there were talks of a plot to impeach Chief Justice Renato Puno over the non-promulgation of a supposed en banc decision of the high court dated July 15, 2008 upholding the disqualification of Rep. Jocelyn Limkaichong (First District, Negros Oriental) allegedly because she was not a Filipino citizen. One [...]



The lost decade

By Val G. Abelgas • Jan 15th, 2010 • Category: On Distant Shore

Some Filipino businessmen call it the “lost decade,” the first 10 years of the third millennium that was characterized by scandals, graft and corruption, political violence and intense political divisiveness that, in turn, resulted in lost opportunities for them and more difficult conditions for the Filipino people.
 
            It was a decade ushered in by hope [...]



A distant Christmas

By Val G. Abelgas • Dec 31st, 2009 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
            For Filipinos who have been outside of the Philippines for years, Christmas is both a time for rejoicing and a time for remembering. Even as the Filipino in America begins to feel the holiday mood immediately after Thanksgiving when people start shopping for gifts and Christmas decors, he feels at the same time a [...]



Dancing the cha-cha with Washington?

By Val G. Abelgas • Dec 17th, 2009 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
                 More than a year after the Supreme Court slapped a temporary restraining order on the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Muslim Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the MILF has now been reported as having sought the assistance of the United States to [...]



Another look at the massacre

By Val G. Abelgas • Dec 17th, 2009 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
            “What’s happening to our country?”
 
            This rhetorical question was whispered by former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez to Police Gen. Tomas Karingal in 1982 while he was being wheeled to the hospital after being shot by assassins after attending mass at Mt. Carmel Church in Quezon City during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship.
 
            [...]



Bring on Mayweather

By Val G. Abelgas • Dec 1st, 2009 • Category: On Distant Shore

It will happen. It has to happen.
 
            “We are morons not to let it happen,” Richard Schaefeer, president of the Golden Boy Promotions that promoted the last three fights of Floyd Mayweather Jr., was quoted as saying on the possibility of a fight between Mayweather and Filipino boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao.
 
            Indeed, it is [...]



Escudero’s dilemma

By Val G. Abelgas • Nov 16th, 2009 • Category: On Distant Shore

 
            I had expected Sen. Francis Escudero to withdraw his candidacy during a press conference he had scheduled last week at the Club Filipino in Greenhills. This was based on earlier reports that his patron at the Nationalist People’s Coalition, businessman Danding Cojuangco, had decided to patch up differences with his estranged cousin, Peping Cojuangco, [...]