Sidebar.

NO LESS than the home province of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ B. Abad, head of the architect agency of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), received…

According to a July 2014 official report on ARMM’s Transition Investment Support Plan (TISP), implementation of the DAP-funded TISP projects had involved a multi-layered network of…

THE STORY of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) has been debated using various frames. President Benigno S. Aquino III has offered the “right vs. wrong” frame, saying that…

IT TOOK a peeved senator, who was being accused of corruption, for the public to be inadvertently introduced to what is now known as DAP or the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

Photo by Julius D. Mariveles HE WAS born to one of the old-rich families of Negros Occidental in the sprawling Hacienda Binitin in the town of Murcia, but Roberto L. Montelibano…

A multinational team of journalists spent months combing through secret tax haven records revealing offshore holdings of China’s rich and powerful

SOMETIMES, ANGELINA ‘Angie’ Cauzo chats with her husband in front of a small family altar in their modest house in Talavera, Nueva Ecija. As stereotypical marital conversations go…

MAJORITY OF the 12 political parties that fielded senatorial candidates in last May’s elections were able to register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), but most of them…

MUTUALLY reinforcing interests — all too often political interests — between national and local politicians to this day drives the selection of which local government units (LGUs)…

IT SEEMS the heads of five government corporations would not be the only ones on the chopping board for implementing the anomalous pork barrel projects recently reported by the…

FOR THE 2013 midterm elections, a company called the International Global Mining Exchange (IGME) donated P5 million to the campaign kitty of deposed President Joseph Estrada’s…

LAGUNA GOVERNOR Emilio Ramon ‘ER’ Ejercito never got to have the success in the film industry that was enjoyed by his uncle Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada. But in the May 2013 elections, he…

IMPLEMENTING THE Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) takes a long and layered process because it is a lump-sum item, which means that its purpose has yet to be identified…

BOTH VETERANS of the “parliament of the streets,” they mounted separate failed, if high-level and issues-focused, campaigns for the Senate in the May 2013 elections. Yet while Ana…

THEY WERE supposedly set up to uplift the lives of those in need. Yet in their first few months of operation, they served a rather different, yet specific, purpose: to promote the…

IN PRINCIPLE, the setting of basic water rates for customers of Manila Water Co. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. is easy enough to understand. Of course, the key phrase there is…

IF YOU can’t jail them, elect them. If you do jail them, well, you can always elect them again. This appears to be a recurring theme in the Philippines, where the popular saying…

TO EACH his own power base. Among the six senators who are raring to return to the Upper House, lawyers Alan Peter Cayetano, Chiz Escudero, and Koko Pimentel all belong to…

IF TEDDY Casiño is looking mighty lonely in the Senate race, it’s not only because he’s running as an independent. Among the House members now seeking a Senate seat, Casiño is the…

NO LESS than its highest-ranking officials have repeatedly stated in media a serious intent to curb campaign spending and other illegal campaign activities in the May 13, 2013…

THE ONLY thing constant is change, supposedly, but apparently there are some things that remain the same. Yet another round of elections, for instance, will find Maguindanao still…