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Instead of attacking the COA should it find and report an anomaly in this or that agency, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. could urge the offending party to do better. In doing so he would be defending the Commission as a Constitutional body crucial to the drive for good government and national development to which every administration, including his and his predecessor’s, claim to be committed.
Two days apart this week, two important commemorations took place. One evoked a resounding plea for long-delayed justice; the other, for the resumption of peace negotiations to attain just and lasting peace. In each case, concerned groups and advocates urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to act positively.
By living a life of humility and gratitude to God, we therefore must always remember those whom our Lord Jesus Christ cared for – the poor, the destitute, those who have nothing and those who long for God’s complete salvation. For we once were like them, in need of God’s salvation.
Like any coup in the less developed countries of the Third World, a coup in the US, even a “soft” one, would also be solely focused on advancing and defending the interests of its instigators and of the wing of the power elite it installs in power. The rest of the world would hardly matter.
“As Church, we are challenged by our present time and context to stand for truth… The Church will not and cannot be neutral on moral and ethical issues and concerns.”
Wala sa lugar ni kakayahan ng NTF-ELCAC na magsuri ng mga akda. Kung gustong magsulat nila Badoy at Celiz ng literaturang “di subersibo,” magsulat sila. Ngunit malaking insulto sa utak nating mga Pilipino na diktahan ng isang “task force” para sugpuin ang rebolusyonaryong kilusan ang ating sensibilidad, panlasa at kakayahang magproseso ng nababasa at bumuo ng sariling kritika.
If indeed the Marcos II administration intends to bring back the past by, among other means, making ROTC mandatory again, 21 years after it was made an NTSP elective, it could start by first instituting the needed reforms in the program to prevent or at least reduce the corruption, abuses and violence that many associate with it.
But, the greatest preparation of them all is this, are we ready to accept and claim the comprehensive notion of salvation (economic, political, cultural, spiritual and environmental) that only comes from God? Are we ready to follow the way, the truth and the life who is Jesus Christ? We know we will die sometime, but we do not know exactly when. Did we address the things that truly matters, like love, forgiveness and reconciliation before we die?
“Withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not discharge a state party from the obligations it has incurred as a member. Consequently, liability for the alleged summary killings and other atrocities committed in the course of the war on drugs [during the Duterte administration] is not nullified or negated.”
The US aggressive military postures toward China entails a maximized implementation of the VFA and EDCA as well as a more extensive presence of US military troops and facilities through US military largesse swapped with local oligarchic fealty to US military and economic interests.
We don't owe the Joint Hague Declaration solely to FVR. But that he enabled that part of our history, which, to my mind is our march toward just peace, is a legacy that each president of the Philippines after FVR must be measured against.
Marcos Jr.'s priority is to ensure that the neoliberal policies that his predecessor President Rodrigo Duterte passed are maximized to create the most favorable environment for big businesses, including foreign capital. To become an investment destination, the administration will provide massive tax breaks to corporations through the CREATE Law and provide foreign companies more profit-making opportunities with the amended laws on public services and foreign investments.
Mula kay Marcos at ngayon, balik kay Marcos, hindi tumigil ang karahasan ng estado.
Priests and Levites were the good guys. They were models of society in word and deed. They were expected to help the wounded: their fellow Jew, on that “bloody way” connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. But they did not.
A replication of mindless conformity and blind obedience is in process in the Philippines, where the power elite and its minions regard dissent and the diversity of views necessary in a democracy as a vice rather than virtue. Instead of unity in diversity, what the oligarchy wants is unity in conformity.
In his first Cabinet meeting last Tuesday, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that economic recovery takes precedence over all concerns under his administration and that his economic managers would set the “central policy.”
Today we also are called to draw closer to Jesus and his mission of bringing about a new reign of justice, peace and love. As disciples, we know from experience the path is not easy. Moving into a new Government, we need to heed the advice of Jesus to his talmidim to be alert, especially as we see hungry farmers still being arrested for planting food crops, false charges against progressive people and organizations continuing, ecological defenders harassed and killed and indigenous peoples displaced.
Together with, and partly as a result of, its attacks on the press, it is leaving behind it neither change nor development, but more of the same rule of the few, even worse poverty, and, as it kept reminding us, the use of State violence and terror against anyone who dared exercise the freedoms the Constitution protects.
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