At the End of the Day

A 400-STRONG “Muslim separatists” against a team of 100 soldiers, most like a team of Army Special Forces (ASF), a news report went, and augmented by members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), backed by bomber planes and artillery fire.  GMA News reported that the debacle resulted from “a military operation against a few fugitive MILF rebels and Abu Sayyaf bandits in Al-Barka town.” And when the firefight broke, the fugitives managed to increase their strength to 400 men, while the pursuing operatives failed to get theirs. And this resulted to the death of 19 soldiers, including four officers, and seven enemies after more than 10 hours of fighting.  But amid the calls of an all-out war against all separatists, including the MILF, there are a few lessons that the Philippine armed forces needs to learn in order to prevent deaths like these—a full-alert state of mind. Laxity on the part of military intelligence apparently has led into this unnecessary deaths, consid

IS IT MAKING judgment over the late president Ferdinand Marcos to not grant his burial with state honor? Is it arrogance to see him as a dictator when no court of law ruled on him as such? A Catholic Church worker even ventured to quote the Gospel of Saint Luke (6:41): “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?  First, it must be made clear that no judgment is needed of the late strongman because history, and the Filipino people, has already judged him. The fall of his regime is a proof in history that the people has passed judgment on the evils he spawned, and no single person of today can claim better judgment on Marcos than those who put him out of power. Second, in a perfect judicial system, anyone judged by law is presumed guilty; while anyone not judged by it is presumed innocent. Unfortunately, the Philippine judicial system is very far from perfect. In fact, no judicial system in the world can claim such p

SENATOR FERDINAND Marcos, Jr. seethed when he learned that President Benigno Aquino III made up his mind to not grant any state honor for the burial of his father and late strongman Ferdinand Marcos. In his mind, the decision foregoes a chance to unify the divided nation. This is a classic case of turning the table that lawyers know very well when trying to twist the facts of a case in favor of their clients when the truth would have been unfavorable. The Philippines has a long history of convicted criminals who insisted into their graves that they were innocent of their crime. If only the truth is more powerful than those who refused to accept it for defensive reasons, especially when admission can open floodgates for restitution. If only... But there will never be true unity when reconciliation remain famined from the withholding of the truth. Those who suffered the injustices of the Marcos regime will never be fully reconciled to the memory of those injustices, and ne

ONE OF THE MOST difficult Filipino mindset to change is that of entitlement without accountability.  Certain congressmen lately howled at the administration for requiring them to submit details of their projects for the 2013 budget. If you think of it, there is nothing wrong with that. If a lawmaker has projects for his district, what’s the big deal with submitting details? Are these details not needed before any projects get accepted by the congressman himself for the district? It is proper procedure that a study of a need first be taken before any project to meet that need be considered for financing using the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allotted to the congressman. So a valid project must involve a valid study to justify the funding. These study documents are simply what can be submitted to the Palace to justify the projects. The recent hullabaloos however tell us a lot of things. First, certain congressmen believed that their PDAF is their own personal fund that

THE MORO ISLAMIC Liberation Front (MILF) boldly declared that Muslims be allowed to run their government even "if they go to hell by their own making, so be it." I go for a lasting peace in Muslim Mindanao; but I have serious doubts on real peace when these armed Muslim leaders cannot accept the fact of life that Mindanao is no longer a Muslim territory after Muslim settlers took the land from the Lumads in the prehistoric Philippines. I came from Zamboanga, and grew there. Despite MILF's claim of representing the dream of Muslims in Mindanao, I have serious doubts if the leaders are merely using this separatist slogan for their own aggrandizement. Look at ARMM under MNLF's Nur Misuari who had nothing to show for the tax shares it received from the government. And reports had it Misuari kept a huge sum from this money for his own accounts. So I have so much reservations on the lasting peace settlement with the MILF can bring. First, how much really of our Muslim si

THE SECOND DEFINITION of the intransitive verb, "abort," in Merriam-Webster dictionary runs as "to become checked in development so as to degenerate or remain rudimentary." One characteristic of "development," aside from being an act or a result, is that it is also a process. Any process begins at the point of initiation, but not the generation of an idea, or the planning stage. And "rudimentary" inarguably means "of a primitive kind," or being in its fundamental form. This gives us a more fundamental definition of the term "abortion" as the "termination of the process of giving life to a human being through a natural, biological and developmental process of conception into a child ready for birth." Now, this definition is entirely different from the standard medical definition of "abortion." Merriam-Webster's standard definition of "abortion" is "the termination of pregnancy after, acc

SHOULD SENATE BILL 2497 becomes law, the Upper Chamber would once again distinguish itself as a bastion of rationality and moral discernment in a Congress that has been confused over whose right must be protected the most--that of the mother, or that of the unborn child? The mother bill House Bill 4244, sponsored by Representative Edcel Lagman, believes that mothers must be protected with the protection of the unborn child given only a lip service. While Section 3(i) recognizes that "abortion is illegal and punishable by law," it does, in a twist of linquistic doubletalk, not support the idea that such is a serious break of the law; and instead proposed that "all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled." It is like giving treatment and counseling to a serial killer after murdering a child, and then simply saying, "You may go now. Just come back to us for a regular check on your wounds." HB4244 is an all-mother bil