By Herbert Vego YESTERDAY I heard a broadcaster waxing ecstatic over the backslide of the peso to P50.30 per US dollar because “it’s good news to families of overseas workers.” In a sense it’s true. The “increase” from P48 to P50.30 to a dollar means that the housewife would gain more pesos to spend. In
July 19, 2021
By Herbert Vego THIS corner begs of Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas and Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. to keep on resisting the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) to place their jurisdictions under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) that would completely lock down non-essential businesses and restrict travel effective
July 16, 2021
By Herbert Vego JUDGING from the divisiveness wracking the PDP-Laban party to where President Rodrigo Duterte belongs, it has already disintegrated into three factions in the Senate – each with self-serving political agenda. Duterte was obviously shocked when Senator/boxer Manny Pacquiao – the party’s acting president — called his stance on our maritime dispute with
July 14, 2021
By Herbert Vego “RIDING off into the sunset” is an often-misunderstood idiom. I myself used to attach a negative connotation to it, alluding to a retiree spending the rest of his old life in anticipation of death. On the contrary, it means “to begin a new happy life.” I turned 71 years old as a
July 12, 2021
By Herbert Vego IF President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte is really running for vice-president with Senator Christopher “Bong” Go as running mate for President – a “dream team,” according to their bootlickers — does it make sense? To us yearning for real change, it does not. But let us momentarily give Digong the benefit of that
July 9, 2021
By Herbert Vego IN line with my health regimen, I walk around a mall for at least 30 minutes a day, usually before eating lunch in one of the restaurants thereat. But most of my favorite eateries have closed, obviously because of restrictions brought about by the government-imposed modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ). With that in
July 7, 2021
By Herbert Vego FOR his incessant hits against China’s incursions at the West Philippine Sea, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has earned critics who think he is thinking of running for a national office in 2022. That seems tenable, considering that Carpio disdains President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to China. But Carpio, even during
July 5, 2021
By Herbert Vego “DAMN if I do, damn if I don’t.” We did not hear Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas quote the famous quotation, but that was the catch-22 position he found himself in. In other words, he stays enmeshed in a dilemma from conflicting opinions. For more than a month already since May 23, the
July 2, 2021
By Herbert Vego WHILE I was handing my senior citizen’s ID to a waitress of a restaurant, she looked at me as if to say I did not look my age. I was wrong. “Lucky you for being a senior,” she said. “You get a 20 percent discount and pay no VAT for each meal.”
June 30, 2021
By Herbert Vego USING Facebook, I often succeed in my search for old friends, one of whom is a fellow journalist from a decade gone by (1970s). Eusebio “Bing” San Diego and I used to write regularly for the weekly Mod magazine. Having retired from his writing and teaching jobs, he kills time by writing
June 28, 2021
By Herbert Vego THE unexpected death of former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III yesterday at age 61 made our day sad. I guess that, in one way or another, his passing opens in every Filipino a memory of the man who had been a former congressman, former senator and former President of the Philippines. My
June 25, 2021
By Herbert Vego HAPPY days are here again for the commercial pollsters, assuming they stand to amass a windfall from unbelievable surveys hailing the President’s daughter, Sara Duterte Carpio, as the top runner in the May 9, 2022 presidential derby. To think that she has not yet decided to run… She had to be compelled
June 23, 2021