The Senate will start deliberating in plenary today the proposed P3.35-trillion national budget for 2017 that lawmakers said contains provisions on climate change adaption, fighting illegal drugs, promoting peace, and social protection for the poor.

 

WITH about one million new entrants into the Philippine labor pool every year, our economy obviously needs to undergo fundamental restructuring, not just to absorb these new entrants but to offer hope to the tens of millions under- and un-employed Filipino labor force stuck in “endo” jobs, menial work (here and abroad), meaningless and deadend BPO jobs and extremely marginal livelihoods driving tricycles or selling in the streets and worse, blasting fishes or turning the country’s last 3 percentof natural forest into charcoal.

 

Healing comes with great cost, especially on the heels of P-noy’s mis-governance. It has been 3 years, and the ghost of the past still haunts the administration who failed to rise from the situation. It was an ugly scenario, when the former DILG secretary Mar Roxas denied assistance, or to put it right, made it difficult for the LGUs to gather support just because they hailed from the rival parties. That was a painful demonstration and reality of political stalemates in the Philippine system taken into the most inappropriate of situations, in the middle of a calamity.

 

WHEN we build the country today, we should build it fast and build it for the Filipinos, not the oligarchs! For ultimately, the owners are the taxpayers. The first protocol therefore of Build. Build. Build. is, damn the oligarchs who cause delays and create problems to protect their turfs.

 

THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) recently reached an agreement with the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and the National Housing Authority (NHA) to facilitate tax incentives for developers of socialized housing projects. This is a good first step toward encouraging the Philippines’ energetic real estate and construction industries to do their part in helping to relieve the country’s massive housing shortage.

 

MANILA, Nov. 8 — President Rodrigo Roa Duterte signed on Monday, November 7, an executive order establishing an expanded Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), the body tasked to draft an enabling law that will serve as the legal foundation of the future Bangsamoro government in Mindanao.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.- At the November 3 swearing-in ceremony of Ambassador Sung Kim, Secretary John Kerry reiterated the U.S. commitment to the Philippines, stating "the United States continues to place a high value on the close ties that exist between our countries. We continue to recognize our ironclad commitment to the sovereignty, independence, and security of the Philippines. And we will continue to cooperate in efforts to maintain peace and stability, and to promote shared prosperity in the Asia Pacific region." He hopes to visit the Philippines before his term ends on January 20, 2017.

Last of two parts

In the capitalist system, where the practice of unimpeded free market is undisturbed by the state, the better capitalized actors will tend to dominate, distorting the market mechanisms. Cartels, oligopolies and monopolies arise and eventually exploit the weaker players. “Survival of the fittest” is not only axiomatic but it becomes the guiding principle. The market is by nature not equipped with a conscience to correct the inequities done to the less fortunate.

The Automated Election System Watch, through Dr. Nelson Celis, has been asking the Commission on Elections (Comelec or our state poll body) to promulgate a set of implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the implementation and enforcement of the Automated Election Law, Republic Act No. 8436 as amended by Republic Act No. 9369.

 

MANILA, Philippines – Clashes in ideology threaten to split the ruling administration Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) that supported then Davao City mayor and now President Duterte in the last elections, sources disclosed yesterday.