During the first Aquino presidency the government entered into a well-intentioned public-private partnership (PPP) that should have defined the Aquino legacy for its endeavors to engage the private sector in public infrastructure. Beyond its economic benefits, the 1992 Smokey Mountain Development and Reclamation Project (SMDRP) would have been a centerpiece welfare program for its laudable impact on [...]

At the height of his popularity in a noontime show aired by a network that has now filed charges against him, for years Willie Revillame lived down the road from my house.  He was a quiet neighbor and unlike other celebrities in the area, he was neither intrusive, noisy nor indecent. He did not act like the [...]

When the phenomenon of globalization impacted on outdated bureaucratic systems, the aspect of data control suddenly turned critical as information was not simply networked through global markets but also the expertise to wield data seemed limited to those with the appropriate technologies. For an economy deficit-driven, corrupted, crook-controlled and largely dependent on labor and brick [...]

Like the serial blunders and bungling that occur with disgusting regularity coming more often than a cabinet meeting at the Palace on the Pasig , there is a recurring label that surfaces once too often. It is the name of a company that figured in a scandal started many years back during the first Aquino [...]

Rather than capitalize on the inherent strengths of a popular mandate and a constituency willing to sacrifice for profound economic benefits, it is becoming apparent that recycled officials clinging on to Benigno Aquino III’s coattails are bent on pursuing an agenda quite apart from Aquino’s. Economic analysts fear an expanding chasm separating the Department of [...]

If you think that serial bungling, miscommunication and lack of coordination are confined to the Malacanang Communications Group and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), think again. Where, for the former, it had cost innocent lives and for the latter, international embarrassment, now between the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and [...]

When they said that the Aquino bureaucracy was having problems attracting competent men, they weren’t kidding.  Unlike Barack Obama, who, as a senator, circulated among competent bureaucrats; or even Ronald Reagan and Joseph Estrada, whose local government experiences honed both with an uncanny ability to identify and attract qualified and capable advisers, Benigno Aquino III [...]

It is one of those things that had assaulted our sensibilities for so long we felt it had petrified as a permanent fixture of government much like corruption.  We dismissed it as part of real politic and it was only until Sen. Franklin Drilon showed us just how abominable and abhorrent the practice had become [...]

As critics of the Aquino cabinet focus on the conditional cash transfer program of the DSWD, they recall a financial controversy involving an NGO founded by the current DSWD secretary and the issuance of controversial zero-coupon bonds under the past administration.  This essay explores the upsides of those bonds and how they benefitted the banking [...]

It might as well have been as distant as Andromeda and as far back in the past as the faint light of the far away galaxies that take forever to reach us. Few might remember and fewer still might care. It belonged to a different time and a different place. When Manila had not yet [...]