In August 2018, President Duterte conveyed to his countrymen that he expected China would be fair on the South China Sea dispute and that they should accept Beijing as a good neighbor. He told his fellow Filipinos: “I am sure that in the end, China will be fair and the equity will be distributed.” He predicted that “in the days to come, we would realize that China…is really a good neighbor.”

The spectacle of President Donald Trump berating and insulting members of media at a press conference he held after the US mid-term elections was so reminiscent of a similar emasculation of a journalist by President Rodrigo Duterte several months ago.

AFFORDABLE ENERGY is a precursor to economic growth, which is of particular importance given our country’s current situation: we are facing energy supply challenges while paying for high electricity prices.

Why is national poverty incidence in the Philippines more than twice that of ASEAN peers -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam? It is even magnified in the farmers’ and fishers’ poverty of 34%. Thesis: it is due to broad-based low productivity and concentration on few products.

It is more than five years now since China’s President Xi Jinping introduced the Silk Road Economic Belt in Kazakhstan in September 2013 and the 21^st century Maritime Silk Road in Indonesia in October 2013. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or the One-Belt-One-Road (OBOR) officially became China’s national development strategy in November 2013 and was included in its 13^th five-year plan in March 2016 as part of the strategy to deepen China’s reform and opening as well as to establish new mechanisms for economic development.

Last week, the October inflation and 3^rd quarter GDP growth data were released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the numbers confirm the fear of many observers of deteriorating macroeconomic fundamentals of the Duterte administration.

Detractors of President Rodrigo Duterte cannot believe the findings of Social Weather Stations (SWS) that 70% of adult Filipinos are satisfied with the President’s performance and that the country is in the right direction despite the high prices of basic commodities, the drug trade still thriving, and incidents of crime as rampant as before.

There has been much hand-washing among our legislators on TRAIN 1. The unfortunate part about this is they were responding to fake news.

“We demand that the World Bank (WB) review the Philippines’ rating, and make a correction immediately given our country’s increases in the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) scores, which was, unfortunately, offset by the grossly inaccurate and understated findings in the Getting Credit indicator of the Report.

When does a political family become a political dynasty? A political dynasty is established in two instances. First, when an elected government official is succeeded by a member of his household up to the first degree of consanguinity or affinity. Second, when several members of a family occupy various positions in government simultaneously.

INUTILE. That’s how I felt at my beautiful sister Mae’s bedside when she died in 1995, barely a year since arriving back home from her chemotherapy in Michigan. She had two daughters -- Ynna Belen and Angela Jed, just as beautiful as her. She had beautiful dreams ...

What the media described as an “apology” last Oct. 24 from former Marcos Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile was in the same league as that of Marcos’s daughter Imee’s and son Bongbong’s.