The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
We can only commiserate with the neophyte senator, former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. It looks like her planned expose’ on alleged extrajudicial killings linked to the police was not just a dud – it is backfiring on her.
Points of View & Perspectives
August, 2016
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21 August
Gaming the grid
Recently the Department of Energy (DOE), alarmed at what seems to be creeping up slowly at a time when the regulatory hierarchy may at be its most vulnerable, its newly appointed officials experiencing honeymoon period pangs, implored its strongest regulatory arm to investigate possible market abuse and cartelized criminality.
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21 August
‘A murder convict naka-escape daw, and on the prowl’
Overheard at lunch, from behind us in a restaurant on Amsterdam in New York. Turning my head—I guessed right, apparently visiting moms of Filipino nurses working in a hospital close by. Their conversation pitched as each grabbed the floor from the other, throwing in cinder to burn this alleged virtual criminal at a stake, in their minds, that is.
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21 August
De Lima’s vague explanations on presidential exposé
Will neophyte Sen. Leila de Lima eventually emerge as the figurehead of a token opposition to the administration of President Duterte?
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14 August
Heckling Duterte won’t work
There seems to be an organized mass heckling campaign directed against President Duterte. It is being mainly played out in social media. It is obvious that it is being carried out by parties that have supported losing candidates in the last presidential elections.
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14 August
One can never guess
Who you meet could serve you a true story, which you had thought was but a tall tale. The setting: Broadway in New York’s Upper Westside, where you either flow with or against an incessant stream of people, scissoring the tunneled breeze, or sigh in relief from the oppressive heat into your window seat on the bus, on a midday …
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7 August
The Philippine waste export industry
We were seething when one North American economy had sealed its decaying hospital waste in huge metal containers and shipped them over to our pristine shores. Our emotions ranged from being insulted and branded an international dump to being the clueless recipient of toxic waste that absolutely had neither economic value nor any utility, save for spreading illnesses and deadly …
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7 August
A secret illness
Given my penchant for nostalgia, especially if progressed to its extreme, I would have been diagnosed with this malady had I lived in the 17th century—when longing for the past skidded beyond its reputation as romance into an identified illness.
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7 August
Cuba seen as model for Phl food security
The Philippines can learn from Cuba on how to achieve food security through sustainable agriculture, coupled with an efficient healthcare system and genuine universal health coverage.
July, 2016
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31 July
Taxation as political weaponry
One of the first acts initiated by the Duterte administration to address past flaws was the suspension of audits contained in an eleventh-hour issuance from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).