I came across a very interesting article in today’s issue of the International Herald Tribune, my preferred daily morning literature (next to the Philippine Daily Inquirer which, for some reasons, I find rather dull recently). In this front-page feature entitled “France’s mysterious embrace of blogs”, author Thomas Crampton referred to the French “obsession” with blogging. […]

I always enjoy leaving Manila and experience different parts of the country. I had been to Cebu before, but that was for seminars and conferences with little time for a closer look around. This time, I focused on the historical parts of town, Fort San Pedro and surroundings and, of course, the Basilica of Sto […]

One faces the future with one’s past, says Pearl S. Buck. Also for this reason, it makes sense to study history. Study the history of the Liberal Party they did, those eminent intellectual leaders of Philippine organized liberalism. At the end, they came out with a manuscript in honor of the 60th […]

One of the major flaws of Philippine political culture is what I term the extreme personalization of the political contest. While the focus on personalities is not uncommon in most democracies, the dominance of the personal factor in the Philippine political system is extreme. This is detrimental to the quality of democratic governance as platforms […]

Most of the educative activities I am involved in target Filipino politicians belonging to what until recently was termed the liberal family. While I have no reason to complain about the feedback regarding more conventional seminars, conferences and workshops, the politicians’ interest in our blogging and podcasting trainings may be called modest at best.
All […]

In the chronicles of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, July 8, 2005 remains a crucial date: The withdrawal of support for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) by a group representing the leadership of the party marks the beginning of the end of the unity of the second oldest political party in the land.
Ever since that […]

The three-day blogging and podcasting workshop in Makati City is just coming to an end. As has become part of my routine as an event organizer, we wrapped up with an evaluation: all participants filled in questionaires, and a discussion with the speakers and the facilitator (c’est moi) followed.

To make it short: We ended up […]

We’re well into the second day of the Blogging and Podcasting Workshop in Makati City. To give the parrticipants more time for their creative endeavours after digesting all that new information, we have extended the activity by one day. This said, our 20 blogging and podcasting novices are just in the process of putting together […]

We’re just in the opening sessions of the “Express Yourself Reloaded” workshop sponsored by the liberal Foundation.
This time, we have 20 participants; many are involed in local government in various parts of the country, others are young activists from the country’s (divided) Liberal movement. Joining the Filipinos this time are blogging novices from Indonesia and […]

I have to apologize for yesterday’s post which admittedly was premature and also too pessimistic. I had castigated the lack of engagement and enthusiasm for the Football World Cup in the Philippines. It might have been better had I first read Saturday’s edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where under a front-page headline the reader […]