Beyond the farcical drama, the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte raises an important question: What is the evidentiary threshold to convict an impeached official? The answer matters because impeachment is neither a criminal prosecution nor a civil action. This distinction is particularly important because public debate can easily
October 12, 2026
Tragically, the Marcos administration seemed to have equated the readiness to ban Facebook as a demonstration of ‘political will’. It is not. It is more like an indicator of the absence of commonsense. The attempted ban on Discord explains everything about this unfortunate situation in the Marcos administration. At least
October 5, 2026
As the social media capital of the world, we badly need to bring life back offline. This should be an urgent educational and social policy objective, particularly for children and young people whose everyday lives are increasingly mediated by social media, online games and digital entertainment. The ‘platformization’ of our
September 28, 2026
The short answer is, she should, because otherwise all the evidence presented by the prosecution will stand unchallenged. Not that this will matter to her solid supporters, but it will likely influence undecided voters. Clearly, the Bill of Rights protects her against self-incrimination. But this story is more complicated than
September 21, 2026
Article XI, Section 3(6) is seemingly direct: ‘No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.’ The constitutional text does not say two-thirds of the senators ‘present’ or ‘participating’, nor does it explicitly reference 24 senators. The Presiding Officer, Senator Chiz Escudero,
September 14, 2026
Utilize the AI tool of your choice and ask this question, ‘What law governs the budget process in the Philippines?’ Then as a voter and taxpayer ask yourself this question, ‘Is this right?’ Billions of your hard-earned money are lost to corruption annually in the national budget. Maybe you have
September 7, 2026
The buzz of a Marcos-Pinklawan coalition for 2028 is getting stronger. Maybe it is just social media being the medium that amplifies pundits and kibitzers with vivid imaginations. But it is pretty palpable from the groups who are vehemently averse to another Duterte administration that a Marcos-Pinklawan ‘uniteam’ is their
August 31, 2026
A ‘sea of trash’ emerged after the intense rainfall. And Cabinet officials actually debated whether to call this a ‘crisis’ or not. Just like Smokey Mountain back in my day, the garbage dump is a visual reminder of our failure to address intergenerational problems. We are likely to be constantly
August 24, 2026
Everyone involved is proceeding as if it was a criminal trial, even though all would always assert that impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. The only explanation for this weird twist is that it gives the protagonists the chance to showcase their dramatic chops. Sadly, their juvenile theatrics have distracted
August 17, 2026
Defenders of free speech have consistently pushed this powerful idea: the best response to bad speech is more speech. This principle, sometimes called ‘counterspeech’, is applied to disinformation too. Falsehoods should not be censored but challenged and corrected by civil society. This approach traces its roots to the characterization of
August 10, 2026
Long before free speech was twisted into a shield for publicly threatening to kill the President and his family, Filipinos knew what genuine censorship looked like. Under Spanish rule, criticizing government invited charges of sedition. Colonial rulers feared ideas because they understood a dangerous truth: words can overthrow oppressive regimes
August 3, 2026
Every SONA reminds us that electing clowns to Congress ensures bad governance. An even harsher reminder is that electing plunderers, which we have done many times, guarantees the plunder of the public coffers. But the most stinging lesson of all is the fact that Congress represents who we are as
July 27, 2026