There’s the Rub
Brand of politics
By Conrado de QuirosIt’s no easy matter, but I don’t know that we really have much choice in it. The Ampatuans have every right to run in the elections.
It’s no easy matter, but I don’t know that we really have much choice in it. The Ampatuans have every right to run in the elections.
In the wake of the shocking Nov. 23, 2009, massacre in Maguindanao, the Ampatuan patriarch and his sons, the principal suspects in this heinous crime, began a frantic search for sharp lawyers who would take up their case and defend them. One of those sounded out was my brother Dante, a litigation lawyer with many years of experience in criminal law. He did not know any of the Ampatuans, but he knew many of those who had been initially hired for this difficult case. A huge acceptance fee was hinted. My brother turned it down without hesitation, politely saying he already had a crowded schedule.
Friends have been sending text messages inquiring why this paper’s columnists all have their eyes closed in their photos.
Jose Miguel Arroyo has denied allegations that he and his wife, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ordered the rigging of election results in 2007 in favor of the administration’s senatorial candidates. “My wife was not running for president in 2007 and neither was I. So why should we order cheating?” he said. “It defies both common [...]
The Commission on Audit has another horror story to tell about that unlucky place called Maguindanao. COA Chair Grace Pulido Tan told the appropriations committee of the House of Representatives last week that some P1.6 billion in government funds appeared to have vanished, between January 2008 and September 2009, with hardly a trace. During that [...]
FLIP THROUGH the four-volume audit of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Maguindanao. They are case-studies of “utak wangwang,” a phrase President Aquino minted in his recent State of the Nation Address. In his first SONA, P-Noy lashed at the powerful who blasted sirens to shove the weak aside. This time, he deployed wangwang [...]
DID WE in media adequately report the extent of plunder by Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan’s office within the Autonomus Region in Muslim Mindanao? The key word is “adequately.” Hard-nosed reporters probe beneath the superficial. Inquirer ran a series by Fernando del Mundo on thousands of ordinary farmers conned by the coconut levy scam. Journalist Marites Vitug [...]
I too was shocked to learn Zaldy Ampatuan had managed to find a line to Malacañang to propose turning state witness against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and his father, Andal. An offer that doesn’t seem to have been spurned outright, indeed that might even have been greeted with sympathetic ears, to go by the way Ampatuan has [...]
This may be the trial that tests our system of justice as never before, the trial to show that even the most powerful are subject to the majesty of the law, and even the most unknown of victims are heard and served by our justice system. It was something that horrified so many of us. [...]
