Sunstar Essay: Like children
I ASKED the taxi driver I took a day after the recent Negros-Cebu 6.9 earthquake. “Diin ka paglinog?”
The strength of the tremors differed in the places where they landed, from 6 to 6.5 to 6.6 to 6.7 to 6.8 to 6.9, unhappily not below magnitude 6.)
Mercado: Rubbing patience raw
HOW long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” Cicero erupted in 63 BC at the Roman Senate against a tyrant plotting subversion.
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” fits exchanges between Rep. Tomas Osmeña and Mayor Mike Rama on the panic, triggered by false...
Obenieta: Qualifying the quick
TO walk the talk of progress, the first step is to find out where we would likely wobble and stumble flat on our faces.
Up front with our vulnerability could be the better part of valor, hands down, even though uncertainty finds us groveling with a clown’s grin. Speaking of Cebu and...
Lim: Love yourself
I WAS restless, inattentive and hyper-active as a child. I had trouble sitting still or keeping quiet. I found school mostly boring. My mind wandered off constantly. And I chatted incessantly in class. This, understandably, irked my teachers.
One school year, I was moved to all parts of...
Malilong: My priest, right or wrong
THE issue of sexual abuses committed by members of the clergy is a sensitive one that the Catholic Church in the Philippines has consistently sought to avoid discussing publicly in the past. It is therefore a surprise that no less than the Archbishop of Manila has all but acknowledged the extent...
Tabada: When women talk
SHE said her name is Arlene. She lived and worked for a time in Manila, handling the carvings sold in the stall she handles now in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.
Though it was quicker and more lucrative to sell goods to tourists and locals who didn’t count the cost, city life tired her....
Editorial: Revisiting RP-US relations
REP. Walden Bello of the party-list group Akbayan was correct when he urged the House of Representatives and the Senate to closely monitor talks between officials of the Philippines and the United States.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro is in...
Libre: Big day out
AFTER 18 years of rocking Auckland with some of the world’s biggest music acts, Big Day Out called it quits with dwindling ticket sales and escalating costs. It had hosted such acts as Chemical Brothers, Metallica, The Prodigy, Neil Young, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, Marilyn Manson, Foo...
Wenceslao: How Corona operates
I LIKE the post I saw in Facebook yesterday that showed a photo of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona and his wife standing in the terrace of the Supreme Court being contrasted with that of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife standing in the balcony of Malacañang. It was...
Nalzaro: Minglanilla priests, lay ministers reconcile
ALL'S well that ends well, so to speak. The Team Ministry of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Minglanilla and lay ministers who demanded the transfer of the priests for committing immoral acts have reconciled.
This following a dialogue with Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma...
Barrita: ‘Concerned citizens’
SOME 7,000 people, an Inquirer report said, gathered at the Supreme Court in Manila Thursday to cheer up Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.
They said they were simply “concerned citizens” and they have no organizer behind them.
Carvajal: Truth, consequence
IT IS rather unfortunate that Chief Justice Renato Corona’s supporters took to the streets to demand the impeachment trial’s stoppage. Herded and bused into protest mode or not, CJ Corona’s inner core of defenders should have dissuaded these supporters from going into mass action. After all, it...
Editorial: Search for ‘tsunami shouter’
THE police have started questioning people believed to have sparked the tsunami panic that swept parts of Cebu City a few hours after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit Negros Oriental last Monday. But radio block timer Danilo Cogtas and Ermita barangay councilor Domingo Ando Jr. denied they were...
Roperos: US presence here
REPORTS say that the United States is planning to send a second coast guard cutter to the Philippines as part of efforts to boost the country’s military strength “amid tensions at sea with China.” Last year, the US gave the Philippine navy its Hamilton cutter, which was made the flagship of the...
Wenceslao: The Corona gambit
DESPERATION is written all over the recent moves of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona and defense lawyers as the impeachment trial slowly but surely exposed what has been carefully hidden from public view for long. Corona has petitioned his own SC colleagues to essentially shield...
Malilong: Tommy not bothered
LAST week, I wrote about a Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) official who compared Mayor Mike Rama with former mayor Alvin Garcia and concluded that the former would be a tougher challenge to Tommy Osmeña in 2013 than Alvin was in 2001 because, unlike Alvin, Mike is more focused.
Seares: Catching tsunami scare mongers
HOW WILL they prosecute persons who shouted "Tsunami! Tsunami!" after Monday’s quake aftershocks and set off a city-wide panic?
All right, police may catch those whom witnesses saw and heard. (As of yesterday, two suspects were invited for questioning.) And, yes, they may trace, with high...
Libre: Crying shame
PROPOSAL to lower drinking age faces resistance from liquor board.
If that happens, hangover will become a common excuse for absenteeism in schools. ***
Cebu mayor asks for setting up of crisis center to prevent panic.
Not that asking for a crisis center is a sign of...
Editorial: Will High Court oblige?
SUPREME Court Chief Justice Renato Corona yesterday threw the ball into his own backyard. He asked his own court not only to prevent the Senate acting as impeachment court from presenting his bank records but to stop the impeachment trial altogether and nullify the Articles of Impeachment.
...Roperos: Ground politics
MUCH has been reported in the past few weeks about the political stirrings in the cities and towns of the province regarding the midterm elections set for next year.
The 2013 elections are largely for elective middle level leaders of the country, and involves would-be candidates from the...
So: Facebook education for the househelp
PHOTOS, especially profile pictures on Facebook, can sometimes deceive. The person is not who he looks, more so if his picture shows him to be too good-looking for comfort because he resembles Piolo Pascual.
We all have our moments of delusion of super gwapa-ness or gwapo-ness, that’s why...
Malilong: Lessons from the earthquake
REMEMBER “rumor-mongering”? Basically, it means spreading false report or information and it was punishable under a presidential decree, with a stiff jail term. This was during the martial law years.
What the motorcycle-riding tandem did after the earthquake last Monday was worse than...
Seares: Where we were when the quake struck
Frank Malilong, that whiz of a lawyer-columnist, asked his readers where they were shortly before noon last Monday when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Cebu and Negros. " Where were you?" is often asked after an earthshaking event and Feb. 6's tremor was literally and figuratively...
Espinoza: Educate people about disasters
JUDGING from the reaction to the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that hit Negros and which was felt in Cebu, we are apparently not ready for a catastrophe like the tsunami that hit Japan last year. Worse, concerned government agencies are also unprepared.
Misinformed about a tsunami, people who...
Editorial: A new, more wary normal
AFTER an uneasy Monday night, when the memory of the morning’s quake kept most of us up late, we in Metro Cebu returned to work yesterday, relieved to find we could resume our routines. Perhaps our homes or workplaces sported some newly hatched surface cracks; perhaps those who joined the crowds...
