Did Ninoy Die in Vain?
We took on Marcos, with his martial law, his dictatorship, his human rights violations, his cronies. We kicked them all out – and took our country back.
“Never again”, we swore.
Marcos
SONA 2023: How To Judge PBBM By His Own Standards
Question: If judging BBM on the country’s economic growth versus the ASEAN 5 opens a can of worms, then how should he be judged?
More Fuel to the Fire: The Supreme Court
Politics has reared its ugly head in the JBC, because, as an example, in the Duterte presidency, the short list of candidates presented to him seemed to very often have a San Bedan (his alma mater). The study shows that 40% of his appointees were Bedans, whereas the average for all the other presidents was only 10%.
What They Don’t Tell You -4
The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2022 is the basis of Inconvenient Truth #8: The Philippines has the lowest score, and the lowest rank, among the ASEAN-5 as far as the Rule of Law is concerned. What is so galling is that eight years ago, in 2015, the Philippines had a score (0.53) higher than everyone else, except Malaysia (0.57). As you can see, Reader, the Duterte administration really brought down the Philippines Rule of Law score and ranking – from 0.53 to 0.47, and from 51 out of 102 to 97th out of 140. . One would have hoped that the BBM would see those scores and ranks going up, but judging from what is happening in the de Lima case and what happened in the Remulla fils case, that gleam of hope is fading. In the Philippines, the rule by law still reigns supreme.
Shutting up his critics
Methinks the report aims, among other things, to silence the criticism Marcos Junior has received about his frequent travels.
However, it also has an unintended consequence: Why go through all the effort of changing the Constitution to remove the economic restrictions on FDI? All the country needs to get FDI is to send the President abroad, and voila!, we have all we want. So, shut up, ChaCha advocates.
But we still have to look at the numbers.
The FEM Regime in Facts and Figures
The Filipino’s average income (measured as GDP per capita) in 1985 was less than what it was 12 years before (1973). All the growth during the Martial Law period was washed out, with Juan and Juana de la Cruz holding a much-depleted income bag. And it would take the Philippines until 2002 to regain the real per capita income levels it was enjoying before the collapse.
(Good grief.Golden years?)
Knowledge is Power
Reader, if you want to find out for yourself the truth about the Marcos dictatorship and/or whether or not those years could be considered “GOLDEN YEARS” as far as the Philippine economy and its polity are concerned, there are two documents that will give you very hard evidence on the matter, and which are available on the internet.
PBBM’s First 100 Days: An Assessment
Wouldn’t you like to see, in black and white, Reader, a list of the PBBM’s accomplishments and mistakes, in his first hundred days of the presidency? I will try to oblige.