MANILA, Philippines – President Duterte can do away with the multibillion-peso cost of holding a constitutional convention (con-con) if the number of delegates is reduced to 80 or even 18, according to Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that it is “greatly concerned” on the rise in killings of suspected drug users and dealers in the Philippines.

In a statement, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said that he shares UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s condemnation of the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the country.

ILOILO CITY — An official of the Catholic Church in Iloilo is opposing a move led by President Duterte to amend the Constitution through a Constituent Assembly (Con-ass).

“A Con-ass is dangerous because this could be exploited by politicians for their personal and political agenda,” said Monsignor Meliton Oso, executive director of the Jaro Archdiocese Social Action Center.

As the Philippines transits to a Federal State (hopefully by a Constitutional Convention) it will become important to start thinking of government assets and facilities in terms of their being Federal or Regional in character. While some government assets and facilities are clearly National like the NAIA airport or military camps, others, like the Clark Development Corporation (CDC) OR SBMA are clearly only Regional in character, meaning the impact of operations hardly goes beyond the region.

Contrary to the facile assertions that found their way into the Opinion pages of the Inquirer on July 19 (“Deceptive advertising of federalization”), assailing the proposal to adopt the federal system for the country, I submit that properly refined to suit our culture and traditions, it will speed up development and help end the fratricidal war that has cost thousands of precious Filipino lives since the Spanish colonial era, and billions of pesos in property destroyed even if reckoned only from the 1973 uprisings led by the Moro National Liberation Front.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman wants senators who ran but lost either in the presidential or vice presidential race to be prohibited from returning to their posts in the Senate.

“The practice of balik-puwesto of senators will soon come to an end,” Lagman told journalists yesterday.

While President Digong Duterte gave a really great State of the Nation Address yesterday (making his predecessor look totally petty and incompetent), one little bit of his talk caught the attention of specialists, experts and other people deeply involved in the practice of Comparative Government...

(This article was originally published in year 2012)

Who makes laws? In most of the democratic world, that’s the sole preserve of elected governments. But in Finland, technology is about to make democracy significantly more direct.

Earlier this year, the Finnish government enabled something called a “citizens’ initiative”, through which registered voters can come up with new laws – if they can get 50,000 of their fellow citizens to back them up within six months, then the Eduskunta (the Finnish parliament) is forced to vote on the proposal.

 

BRZEGI, Poland—Pope Francis challenged hundreds of thousands of young people who gathered in a sprawling Polish meadow to reject being a “couch potato” who retreats into video games and computer screens and instead engage in social activism and politics to create a more just world.

President Duterte was urged yesterday to reform the party-list system instead of abolishing it.

“As a principal author of the party-list law, party-list representation must be preserved consistent with the intent of the Constitution to have the marginalized sectors represented in the House of Representatives,” Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said.