Malilong: Schks case
ERICH Schks is out of the country, beyond the reach of Philippine law. The Panamanian diplomat quickly left the country on May 11, dashing whatever hopes a Filipina teenager had of making him answer for the crime of rape that he allegedly committed against her inside his apartment in Makati on...
Malilong: Gone gaga over Lady Gaga
THE governments of Indonesia and South Korea banned Lady Gaga from performing before local audiences. Catholic leaders are now demanding that the administration of Benigno Aquino III follow suit.
Malilong: Chief Justice’s case not doomed yet
SENATE President Juan Ponce Enrile finally said it: In the Chief Justice Renato Corona impeachment case, the Senate is conducting a trial, not a public hearing in aid of legislation. The senators are judges, that is why they wear robes, and which is why we expected them to conduct themselves in...
Malilong: More equal than others
PRO-GLORIA Arroyo congressmen are barking up the wrong tree in demanding that President Noynoy Aquino allow his predecessor to leave jail and travel abroad to receive medical treatment for a supposedly life-threatening complication from her previous neck surgery.
Malilong: Killing of Carcar mayor’s son
FOR the sake of his constituents, not just of his family, Carcar City Mayor Nicepuro Apura should not rest until the police have arrested the murderer of Carl Vinson. If no less than the mayor’s son can fall prey to criminals in his own backyard and in the presence of so many people, how can the...
Malilong: When the Chief Justice testifies
SO CHIEF Justice Renato Corona is going to testify in his impeachment trial after all?
That was not what his lawyers (some of them, anyway) were telling the Cebuanos only last week. There was no way they will allow their client to testify, they swore, because they do not want him to be...
Malilong: Unreasonable behavior
UNLESS the video that I saw on YouTube has been edited, it was clearly the group of actor Reymart Santiago and his actress wife Claudine Barretto that was the aggressor in the brawl with Inquirer columnist Ramon Tulfo at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 last Sunday.
The video...
Malilong: Vice governor in quandary
VICE Gov. Agnes Magpale is in a quandary, almost a pleasant one but a quandary nonetheless. Two political parties are wooing her to be their candidate and she cannot seem to make up her mind whom to choose between them.
Malilong: Gwen’s Senatorial run
THE declarations of support, coming from many, if not most, of Cebu’s political leaders, for her rumored run for the Senate are flattering. But Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia shouldn’t be fooled into believing that all of them mean well because many speak with forked tongues when they say they’d love to...
Malilong: President’s popularity
PALACE propagandists tried to sound positive but there was clearly no joy in the brief statement, which they e-mailed to me last Friday, on the results of the latest Social Weather Stations survey on their boss, PNoy.
“We recognize that the latest Social Weather Station (SWS) survey on...
Malilong: Take the money and go
THE Supreme Court decision in the Hacienda Luisita case is final and executory, according to its spokesperson, Midas Marquez. That ought to be music to the ears of the winning litigants, in this case, the farmers, but haven’t we witnessed this same phrase solemnly declared before, only to be...
Malilong: Let’s talk
WHEN a Navy patrol plane spotted Chinese fishing boats anchored in a lagoon in the Scarborough Shoal, we sent the BRP Gregorio del Pilar to check. Although it is a hand-me-down from the United States Coast Guard, the del Pilar is still our most modern and biggest warship and sending it to a...
Malilong: Manny no longer in ‘most influential’ list
SIX athletes, including two Asians, are among the Top 100 Most Influential People in the World selected by Time Magazine this year. Unfortunately, Manny Pacquiao is not among them.
The list instead includes lady golfer Yani Tseng and injured New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin, who both...
Malilong: Minors in conflict with the law
A SIX-YEAR-OLD girl was handcuffed by the police after she flew into a rage in kindergarten school. She was transported to the police station in a patrol vehicle like any other suspect, with her manacled hands behind her back. Fortunately, it did not happen here but in the United States.
...Malilong: Destiny and the presidency
GAINING the presidency is a matter of destiny, the late chief justice Marcelo Fernan used to say. When he resigned from the Supreme Court in 1991 to launch his candidacy for president, one of the frequently asked questions that he had to face was about his chances of getting elected. His...
Malilong: Defending the islands
THE BRP Gregorio del Pilar is the largest warship in the entire Philippine Navy.
Acquired from the US Coast Guard as part of our country’s defense modernization program, it was commissioned last Dec. 14.
Malilong: Leave Binay alone
DESPITE the damage to adjoining houses and the scare brought to their occupants, we should still be grateful that only the retention wall of a planned 55-story building along Gen. Maxilom Ave. collapsed and that the accident happened this early. It could have been worse.
Malilong: ‘Kaikog’
THE guys of Walk and Talk were doing their usual early morning rounds yesterday at the Cebu Business Park when the skies opened without warning. As the rains poured, they dashed (okay, tried to dash was more like it), not unlike unsuspecting soldiers caught in an ambush, for cover, which they...
Malilong: Road Rev seed fell on good Pasig ground
HOW many men (and women) had themselves nailed to the cross on Good Friday? Holy Week is more fun in the Philippines!
The Church frowns on the practice but cannot do anything to stop the orgy of real-life re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion by Filipino penitents. Civil authorities are...
Malilong: Catharsis
ABOUT this time, last year, I was walking the streets of my hometown in Masbate. It was my first homecoming after 15 years and I was surprised to find that so many things have changed about my town and still so many things have remained the same.
Malilong: Rights of STC and the parents, anarchy
SO NOW it is President Aquino’s fault that St. Theresa’s College (STC) did not allow five of its students to join their graduation ceremonies in defiance of a court order?
Why don’t we blame PNoy for the series of earthquakes that recently struck the country, too?
Malilong: Inviting judicial interference
IT WASN’T just the bikini, said St. Theresa’s College (STC), but the poses struck by the students who wore it, which were, as the photographs showed, “obscene, sexually provocative and revolting to the sense of any decent person, much more to their mothers.” STC is smarting from the beating that...
Malilong: Pacquiao and those ‘heavenly lights’
FIRST, let’s put everything in perspective.
It was the regional director for Northern Mindanao of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) who filed the criminal case against Manny Pacquiao for violation of the National Internal Revenue Code. But he couldn’t have acted on his own, considering...
Malilong: Pulse of the people as judges
ISN'T it funny that we react to the latest Pulse Asia survey on Chief Justice Renato Corona as if the Senate impeachment proceedings were like the popular American television show, Family Feud?
Malilong: Divine intervention
DURING a commercial break in the National Basketball Association game that I was watching yesterday morning, I randomly pressed the numbers on the remote control and soon found myself staring at the Sabong Channel where someone was raving about the cockfighting derby that they just won in Davao...
