I imagine many of us have watched and have been moved by the powerful speech by Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Feb. 14 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, during the “March for our Lives” gun control protest rally in Washington D.C. last March 24.
Gonzalez’ speech was a heart-rending in its simplicity. Three hundred thirty-four words and silence.
The message of Holy Week, Fr. Fidel Fabile – our parish priest in Moonwalk in Las Piñas, said is hope.
After Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem marked yesterday with our waving of the palms, suffering and grief followed culminating in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Then comes the Resurrection which is celebrated on Easter Sunday.
Fr. Fidel said Holy Week re-assures us that amidst all suffering in life, something beautiful awaits us. That there is something to hope for.
Fr. Fidel’s sermon reminded me of the self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad Edgar Matobato and the incident with a firefly.
The statements of Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque and the tweets of Philippine ambassador to the United Nations Teodoro Locsin, Jr related to President Duterte’s decision to withdraw Philippine membership in the International Criminal Court gave the public insights about the disarray in the Malacañang team.
The oblique remarks of the two officials give credence to “don’t-quote-me” info from Malacañang insiders that it was Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo that the President talked with before the 15-page statement that he didn’t even sign was released to the media.
VERA Files has been doing fact-checking training all over the country sharing the knowledge and skills we have learned to sift what is true from the falsehoods that abound in social media.
Our campus tours have been educational for us as we have seen young people, social media savvy yet so vulnerable to the evils of the phenomenal medium. We are invigorated to see that many of them value truthfulness and we are encouraged by their enthusiasm to learn how to fight lies which now come under the banner of “fake news.”
Two weeks ago we were at the University of Antique in the town of Sibalom with 300 education students. Since the participants were future teachers we tweaked our training from “How to fact-check” to “How to teach fact-checking.”
We divided the participants into ten groups and gave the each group suggested statements to fact check. We told them that they can also choose their own subject to fact check. After a 30- minute mini-conference among themselves, they each made their presentation.
The result was fantastic. Using various teaching tools, they made fact-checking fun.
I asked this question to Dr. Aziza al Hibri in a round-table discussion together with former Sen. Edgardo Angara, Philippine Star columnist and Carol P. Araullo who writes for Businessworld.
“Home”, was Dr. Al Hibri’s answer.
“Your home can be a paradise or hell depending on how the husband understands your dignity, your rights, and your value,” she said.
She said there are communities who believes that the man is the head of the family and they can strike the wife.
Al Hibri, the first Muslim woman to become a law professor in the United States and is professor emeritus of law at the University of Richmond, is the founder of Karamah, a Washington-DC based organization of American Muslim lawyers and law faculty focused on human rights and gender issues in the Muslim world.
If Pres. Duterte thinks he is now out of the reach of the International Criminal Court because he directed the Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea to withdraw the ratification of the Philippines of the Rome Statute which established the ICC, he is mistaken.
Former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay said Duterte has no unilateral constitutional authority to withdraw from the Rome Statute of the ICC. The Rome Statute was ratified by the Senate, which shares the Treaty Power with the President. Withdrawal, as a constitutional matter, requires a similar concurrence.”
Hilbay also said, the withdrawal cannot be made “immediately”.
The Department of Justice panel has junked drug trafficking charges against suspected drug lords Peter Lim, Kerwin Espinosa and several others.
I’m dumbfounded.
I share Sen. Grace Poe’s feeling of distress. In a statement, Poe said: “I am disturbed by the basis upon which the DOJ panel made its recommendation to dismiss the drug charges against Mr. Espinosa and others. For one, Kerwin Espinosa, himself admitted before a Senate inquiry that he was indeed involved in the drug trade.
At the start of his administration, President Duterte said there were three million drug addicts in the Philippines which was the reason why he launched a brutal campaign against illegal drugs which has now claimed over 4,000 as of March 2017 per data from the Philippine National Police.
From three million drug addicts, which number he attributed to former head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Dionisio Santiago, he increased it to four million in less than a year.
He even fired then Dangerous Drugs Board chairman Benjamin Reyes for saying there were only 1.8 million drug addicts in the country. Reyes was replaced by Santiago whom Duterte fired after just a few months at the DDB for saying the 10,000-bed capacity mega drug rehabilitation facility in Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija built by a Chinese official was a “mistake” and an “impractical solution” to the drug menace.
It’s good that President Duterte has Harry Roque with him as he seems to have been convinced by China to start the joint exploration in Reed Bank also known as Recto Bank – an undertaking that China had been wanting to do and had been generous with its enticement to the Philippine government.
In an interview with Karen Davila in ANC’s Headstart, Roque, presidential spokesperson, said the cooperation with China will be taking off from “the result of a joint maritime seismic exploration agreement. This will now actually entail joint exploration and possible exploitation of natural resources.”
“We have gone beyond determining if there are resources” and “The only issue is now, is it commercially viable,” he said.
Roque and Davila were talking about the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking or JMSU entered into by the Philippines, China and Vietnam on March 14, 2005.
A day after President Duterte talked about” joint exploration” and “co-ownership” with the Chinese last Feb. 28 in Marawi City, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque was with Karen Davila in ANC’s Headstart.
Davila was following up this statement by Duterte: “Ngayon offer nila joint exploration, di parang co-ownership. Parang dalawa tayong may-ari niyan. Eh,di mas maganda,yan kaysa away. (Now their offer is joint exploration which is like co-ownership. It’s like both of us are owners. That good, better than fighting.)”