A bill on “proof of parking” is now up for consideration at the Senate. How this legislation can actually be effective in easing traffic congestion in Metro Manila is still lost on me. Instead of moving on it hastily, by making it a “priority” measure, I strongly suggest a proper study first be done on how it can best work for us.

The recently concluded “Abuse Summit” at the Vatican convened by Pope Francis frontally addressed the problem of priestly sexual abuse -- a problem and a challenge set against the extremely difficult-to-meet standard of priestly celibacy.

The Philippine poultry industry again faces a challenge after the much-dreaded avian influenza outbreak, or “bird flu,” a few years back: the lifting of the price-based special safeguard duty imposition (SSG) on imported chicken meat and products, which led to a sharp increase in importation to the detriment of the local poultry sector.

When I was a student, I heard an Englishwoman make a statement at a forum that I remember to this day. She said, “If you do not have leftist leanings before the age of 25, you have no heart; but if you still have leftist leanings after the age of 25, you have no head.” Why then does the chairman of our National Youth Commission demand that government scholars who become leftist activists be deprived of their scholarships? And why should uniformed officers go after students and teachers who espouse “leftist” ideologies, however they may define this?

On 18 January 2019, three days before the January 21, 2019 plebiscite for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), President Rodrigo R. Duterte alluded to pursuing charter change once the BOL is ratified. If ratified, the BOL creates the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) and replaces the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Now that the BOL was ratified on 25 January, the path to charter change seems clear. Is it or is it not?

The second Trump-Kim Summit in Vietnam this week, February 27-28, points to many good and optimistic scenarios not only for both US and N. Korea but also for the ASEAN, East Asia and the rest of the world.

Much has been said about the difficulty of doing business in the Philippines, from the time it takes to incorporate a business to the complex maze of procedures we need to follow to get anything done, and the number of approvals needed to move anything.

PERIODIC surveys that check how respondents feel about the future show that as a people, we are an optimistic lot. Our scores on having a positive outlook rank us consistently in the top three in the happiness index. The results favor those who are full of hope on what’s coming ahead. This positive outlook persists even through the bad times we find ourselves in.

COULD a banquet of chicken, beef and rice be the solution to the trade tensions between China and the US.?

THERE’s an old theory that as an organism develops, it progresses through the same evolutionary stages traveled by its ancestors. Traditionally, economic development has worked in a similar way. When a country first shifts from agrarian poverty to industrialization, it tends to start out in light manufacturing, especially textiles. Later it masters more complex manufactured products, and finally it progresses to inventing its own cutting-edge technology. Thus, each country’s development tends to look a bit that of nations that already went through the process.

Competitive neutrality (CN) aims to provide a level playing field between public and private firms. State corporations competing in a market may be accorded many types of support on their operations not available to private firms such as tax and tariff exemptions, debt guarantees, exemptions from procedural requirements, exclusive purchase privileges, access to lower or subsidized interest rates, etc. These non-neutral policies distort the market and attenuate market gains. When extended to provide a level-playing field for all market players regardless of ownership in the same industry, we call it “Competitive Neutrality +” (CN+). The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is committed to pursue efficiency and thus CN in the market. We begin by making a distinction between de jure and de facto neutrality. A rule or law may be de jure neutral but may be de facto non-neutral, that is, enforced in a non-neutral manner by the biased enforcement of the law. We start with the proposed non-exclusive franchise for Solar Philippines.

Most anti-coal activists would resort to disinformation and deception to advance their ecological leftist agenda and in the process, deprive energy consumers of the opportunity to have cheaper, stable and reliable 24/7 electricity, badly needed to sustain fast growth and generate more jobs for the people.