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IF THE push for federalism is at core a variant of decentralization, the nation’s experience with the Local Government Code that passed in 1991 is an object lesson. Dr. Rosario G…

THE EXPENDITURE totals usually don’t quite add up and tallies from different entities don’t match. But there is no question that among those who strike it big during elections are…

BY ALL indications, the May 2016 elections are no different from previous polls in which those donating to the campaign coffers of candidates and political parties turn out to be…

TV REMAINS the major source of information and entertainment among Filipinos even as watching content via digital platforms has risen in the last two years among those with…

EVEN PEACE and order come with a price tag, and next year ours may cost us P206.57 billion. Yet as hefty as that may look, it actually translates to just six percent of the total…

HE RANTS and rails against the drug menace nearly every day, and sometimes, morning, noon, and night time, but always only in press conferences of public events.

BEFORE Rodrigo R. Duterte became President on June 30, 2016, the Philippine National Police (PNP) had hauled a fairly bountiful harvest from its anti-drug war from January 2010 to…

THEY ARE MULTIMILLIONAIRES, affluent and ambitious to the last. On Monday, May 9, Filipinos will get to pick one among them to be president, and another to be vice president, of…

EVEN WITH just part of their campaign spending captured by Nielsen Media’s monitoring of their political ads from Feb. 9 to the end of March, at least two presidential and two…

BARELY A MONTH has lapsed since the official campaign period started last February 9 but at least 15 candidates for national posts have already acquired more than a third of a…

WHEN it conducted its special audit on the disbursement of pork in 2007-2009, part of the methodology that the Commission on Audit (COA) employed was to confirm the authenticity of…

PCIJ SENT 20 legislators implicated in the alleged corruption of pork funds separate letters requesting for comments. Only three responded in writing, a fourth had his chief of…

On Sept. 11, 2013, a day after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on all PDAF spending, Binay announced that he had decided to remove pork from the OVP budget.

CORRUPTION, an apparent eternal scourge of Philippine government and politics, is firmly entrenched in many public agencies.

BEING CHIEF bean counter may not sound that impressive, and the probability of going against countless politicians could be daunting. Yet the job of leading the 9,000 personnel…

SHE IS the first female head of the Commission on Audit, but that will not be the only distinction Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan will be remembered for after her term of office lapses…

THE PHILIPPINES has had seven chairpersons for the Commission on Audit (COA) since 1986. Yet while they have wound up being named respondents in court cases, most of these…

RIGHT AFTER calamities have ravaged homes and communities, the government mounts relief and rescue work with speed and vigor – and still has energy left to provide photo-op events…

A FEW weeks after Super Typhoon Yolanda rampaged through Eastern Visayas in early November 2013, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) found itself caught in a…

DISASTERS USUALLY bring people together, but a few weeks after Yolanda, a video that seemed to highlight a political divide amid tragedy went viral.

FOR SOMEONE just hearing the stories, they sound like episode after episode of the “Walking Dead” TV series. But what Jermaine Bayas and other aid workers witnessed in Tacloban in…