Third among 22 most crony-ridden economies, Philippine GDP went four-fifths to firms owned or favored by the ruling party.

Crony capitalism is under attack globally, but worsened in the Philippines in the past two years, The Economist magazine reports. India and Brazil have jailed billionaires who made piles from repeated sleazy government contracts.

Davao City — President-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte and his economic team will present the country’s economic situation and the incoming administration’s 10-point socio-economic agenda in the “Sulong Pilipinas” economic forum that opens here today at the SMX Convention Center.

Rodrigo Duterte won the Philippine presidency in a blaze of hard-line rhetoric -- an outsider who will stamp out crime and corruption. But his power base is tied to the nation's oldest political camps, including that of ex-dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

MANILA, Philippines – In his proposal for a federal Republic of the Philippines, former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr is eyeing the creation of 11 federal states, while keeping a presidential form of government and increasing the number of elected senators.

A Constituent Assembly (Con-Ass) may be less expensive and time-consuming but President-elect Rodrigo Duterte prefers a Constitutional Convention (Con-Con) to frame a new charter and to convert the country’s unitary government to a federal one, according to Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez.

QUEZON CITY, June 17 -- A total of 559 first-time governors and city and municipal mayors are expected to join the basic orientation training program for newly minted local officials to be conducted by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

Outgoing Interior and Local Government Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento said the ‘Basic Orientation: The First 100 Days’ is part of the long-running Newly-elected Officials (NEO) Program of the DILG through its training arm, the Local Government Academy (LGA) which is a term-based, comprehensive Capacity Development Program for local governments.

DURING the course of the presidential campaign, now President-elect Rodrigo Duterte had repeatedly stated that he was a left-of-center socialist. Although he sympathized with some elements of the ideology of the extreme left, he did not agree to the use of violence as a way to achieve structural reforms in our society, to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth.

The government sets a benchmark today with the start of full implementation of the senior high school program, centerpiece of the contentious K to 12 education reform program of the Aquino administration.

Around 25 million students are expected to return to private and public elementary and high schools, including some 1.5 million who will join the first batch of students in Grade 11, which ushers in two additional years in basic education in the country.

Rappler - Former members of the 2005 consultative commission from CDPI on Vimeo.

MANILA, Philippines – Eleven years after a consultative commission (ConCom) was formed to study amendments to the 1987 Constitution, its former members are backing the proposal of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte to shift to a federal form of government.

Academicians and former members of the 2005 ConCom discussed the features of the proposed charter change during a conference organized by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and the Centrist Democracy Political Institute (CDPI) on Friday, June 10.

A COUPLE of days ago, I stumbled across a pile of books I bought while I was a student of political science in Germany. The questions those books dealt with (and also the thesis I had to write) could be summarized as: “What is good for development and prosperity in democracies?”

Growing up in Germany does not necessarily lead you to believe that everything we have is perfect just because we’re one of the richest countries in the world.