inside Philippine politics and beyond
By Raïssa Robles This interview with Customs Deputy Commissioner Danilo Lim and the accompanying sidebar on smuggling were recently published in Asian Dragon magazine. I am posting these with the magazine’s permission. If the former jailed rebel general Danilo Lim continues to look grim these days, he has good reason to be. Lim, 56, has been handed the chance [...]
By Raïssa Robles “The government has captured the hive but the angry bees have escaped and are regrouping to attack.” A Moro National Liberation Front official said right after the fall of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s Camp Abubakar following President Joseph Estrada’s All-Out War in 2000 To get an estimate of the costs, let’s look at the [...]
By Raïssa Robles My hubby Alan warned me when I started my own website that people can be very vicious on the Internet. It’s true. There are those who would otherwise bite their tongue to stop themselves from saying anything hurtful face-to-face; but they park all decency at the door before entering the World Wide Web. I’m a believer [...]
By Raïssa Robles In the last five years, no Philippine President has accepted an invitation to meet publicly with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) to be grilled. Recently, President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III agreed to meet with FOCAP, knowing full well no questions are off-limits. Our historic date is this October 12, 2011 from 10 [...]
By Raïssa Robles Sorry, I haven’t been able to blog. I’ve been busy chasing so many deadlines, so many forums, briefings and interviews. A case of information and coverage overload. Yesterday, especially, my schedule was INSANE. I had to get up before dawn to get to Resorts World across NAIA Terminal 3. No, not to gamble in , but to [...]
By Raïssa Robles But the problem is, the letter was never delivered because Beijing never gave the go-signal for Vice President Jejomar Binay to hand-carry the letter there. When Binay flew to Beijing in February, he did not carry the letter with him, China’s envoy to Manila Liu Jianchao confirmed in reply to my question during his press briefing [...]
A personal commentary By Raïssa Robles When Imelda Marcos went to the Cultural Center of the Philippines and asked it to shut down an art exhibit, it promptly did. When presidential spokesman Ed Lacierda was asked what the Office of the President intended to do with the same art exhibit, he washed President Benigno Aquino’s hands for him and [...]
By Raïssa Robles Catholic Archbishop Onesimo Gordoncillo gave this unsolicited advice to Catholic President Benigno Aquino: Don’t attack your former college teacher and predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when delivering your State of the Nation Address (SONA) this Monday The Monsignor admonished him: That is not the real meaning of SONA… not to attack a person. Let’s not center on the [...]
Here’s my proof By Raïssa Robles If the Aquino government believes Zaldy Ampatuan’s version of the massacre, it will have to throw away one vital state witness who has consistently said he not only heard and saw Zaldy Ampatuan, his dad Andal Sr. and younger brother Andal Jr. plan the massacre together. This witness also said he was part of [...]
A cock-eyed commentary By Raïssa Robles There was President Benigno Aquino gazing from a bridge and pointing straight at his latest enemy – water hyacinths as far as the eye can see, choking the once mighty Rio Grande, causing it to overflow its banks, flood Cotabato City and make a million lives miserable. And then it gets worse – [...]
Now you see him, now you don’t My Exclusive By Raïssa Robles Even if the Philippine government were to bury the long dead dictator Ferdinand Marcos with military honors, his corpse might not stay buried. Because the way you and I understand the word “buried” is not the way the widow Imelda Marcos understands it. Imelda Marcos has [...]
He’s giving future presidents a bad example By Raïssa Robles Presidents after him will be forced to scrimp and save to match President Benigno Aquino’s niggardly ways of making do with US$46,350 for a 55-member delegation. (The dollar equivalent is calculated using P43.15 to US$1.00 as exchange rate.) I say niggardly, compared to his ex-college teacher and [...]