YESTERDAY marked the 39th anniversary of the assassination of a hero. I will never forget that Sunday of August 21, 1983. I was then 33 years old. As early as 9:00 a.m., I was drinking beer and munching pulutan in a neighbor’s house in Lagro, Quezon City. We were celebrating; former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino
August 22, 2022
TODAY, we celebrate the 144th birth anniversary of the late Manuel Luis Molina Quezon, the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth, who was born on August 19, 1878. In fact, we remember Quezon the whole month of August, which was declared National Lung Month by the late dictator president Ferdinand Marcos on
August 19, 2022
A still unborn generation of Ilonggos will look back to the day (yesterday morning) when MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) buried a cylindrical contraption, popularly known as time capsule. It contains coins, paper money, newspapers, and other items reminiscent of the distribution utility’s first two years and a half of operation.
August 17, 2022
WHAT is the updated population of the Philippines? The official count released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) based on the 2020 census is 109,035,343. That translates to a population density of 363 persons per square kilometer. But based on the United Nations’ 2022 data, it has already gone past 115 million.
August 15, 2022
MANY times, I have heard “evangelists” defend their leadership’s diktat – say, “block voting” in political exercises — by quoting the first three verses of Romans 13: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by
August 12, 2022
‘CONSUMER-CENTRIC’ is how his subordinates call Roel Z. Castro, president of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power). How could we electricity users disagree? He has been going the extra mile to prioritize “service first, profit secondary.” In fact, during an interview with the company’s legal officer, Atty. Alyana Babayen-on, she expressed
August 10, 2022
WHILE walking around the Jaro Plaza, I noticed it was still undergoing renovation as mandated by Republic Act 10555, which declared the Jaro Plaza Complex as one of the seven heritage sites to be preserved for tourism purposes. Authored by the then Congressman Jerry P. Treñas (now mayor) and signed into law by
August 8, 2022
THE Philippine movie industry has been in a moribund state for decades. The movie theaters are gone, except the ones in the malls that show English films. Filipino movies shown there once in a blue moon hardly recover their investment. Last Wednesday (Aug. 3), however, two talked-about rivals for patronage opened simultaneously
August 5, 2022
TWO movies with contrary motives are opening in mall theaters (mostly in Metro Manila) today. One of them, “Maid in Malacañang,” has been heavily advertised as “an untold story of the last 72 hours of the Marcoses inside Malacañang Palace before fleeing to Hawaii.” Untold? Since it has been told and retold in both
August 3, 2022
TIME was when I would not eat vegetables. I had no appetite for them. Instead, I devoured meat — especially beef and pork — as if it would no longer be available the next day. Today, at age 72, I have no choice but to adore veggies for health reasons – that
August 1, 2022
ALTHOUGH the one-year contract of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) with the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) for cheaper geothermal energy has expired, the former as a distribution utility would still source around 20 percent of its energy supply from geothermal giant Entergy Development Corporation. We residents
July 29, 2022
By Herbert Vego THIS corner has received many queries from residents of the municipalities affected by the franchise expansion of MORE Electric and Power Corp, Iloilo City’s distribution utility operating a 25-year franchise under Republic Act 11212. “Has former President Rodrigo Duterte,” they ask, “signed the bill expanding MORE Power’s franchise to 15 towns and
July 27, 2022