Month: May 2019

Bobi Tiglao used to understand that. And used to think it was a good thing.

By Sheila S. Coronel*

A long time ago, when we were young and foolish, Malou Mangahas and I were booted out of The Manila Chronicle for standing up for Bobi Tiglao.

We had wanted Bobi to succeed Amando Doronila as editor of the newspaper. We thought he had the chops to lead the Chronicle, a paper shuttered by martial law but which had reopened months after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos.

How wrong we were.

Since then, Bobi has morphed from being a fact-based journalist to an intellectual apologist for a clampdown on our hard-won freedoms. As a columnist for The Manila Times, he wants us shut down or in jail, based on spurious claims that we are somehow violating the Constitution and are “tools to advance U.S. hegemony over Filipino consciousness.”

This is really more than just a story of a friendship gone sour. It is an assault on the idea of an independent press and on the role of journalists as watchdogs of society.  Bobi’s attack on us, since echoed by Yen Makabenta, another Times columnist, is straight from the playbook of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It softens the ground for a clampdown on the press and civil society.

In 2012, Russia passed a law that branded certain NGOs as “foreign agents” simply because they received foreign funding. In 2015, Putin signed an even more restrictive law that would allow the government to shut down foreign-backed groups it – and no one else – deemed “undesirable.” The Putin playbook — aimed at crushing critical voices and silencing civil society – has been used in several other countries, including Hungary and recently, Brazil. Now Bobi wants to bring it to the Philippines.

April 30, 2019, 1:49 PM
By Leslie Ann Aquino  Manila Bulletin

For Catholic prelates, the best gifts that the government can give to workers on May 1, Labor Day will be more jobs in the country, and an end to contractualization.

“For me the best gifts are: first to create jobs here so that they will never be forced to find work in foreign lands, be separated from their families and to avoid brain and manpower drain,” Balanga Bishop Ruperto Santos said in an interview.

“Second is to end contractual which there would be stability, mutual benefits,” he added.

Bishop Santos said this is also to show our appreciation for the sacrifices of the country’s workers.

“To be grateful and be appreciative of their sacrifices and services is to promote their wellbeing, make their jobs safe, stable and secured. Workers are the builders of the country, agents of progress and development,” he said.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo agreed with Santos.

By CBCP News
April 30, 2019
Manila, Philippines

In his Labor Day message, a Catholic bishop in Negros Occidental paid tribute to the province’s farmers who fell victims to violence in their struggle for their rights.

Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos particularly remembered the nine sugar farmers killed at a hacienda in Sagay City in 2018 that are still awaiting justice.

“The impunity in senseless killings resulting from the landlessness of our agricultural and farm workers are sad manifestations of where we are in our journey towards God’s kingdom of love, justice and peace,” he said.

As a Christian response, Alminaza called on the Basic Ecclesial Communities to have a “pastoral accompaniment” among the Sagay massacre survivors and families of those killed.

The land issue, he said, must be part of reflections among the BEC cluster groups “so that our poor farmers may not feel alone in their plight”.

“Communal action on day-to-day economic life must be discerned in BEC meetings and activities,” Alminaza said.

The bishop also called on leaders of peasants’ groups to make paramount the well-being of their fellow farmers “rather than resort to adventurist steps”.

Addressing the land owners, the prelate urged them to prioritize the interest of common good and denounce violence and greed.

Bishop Alminaza also reiterated his call for justice for the Sagay 9 massacre victims and for the government to address land reform desputes.