by Lito Banayo
from MALAYA   
            Joker Arroyo, the senator from Makati and Bicolano town-mate of SEC Commissioner Manny Gaite (the guy who gave half a million pesos of his own money to the brother of Jun Lozada, because Jun was running low on funds in Hongkong, before he decided to come home and tell the sordid truth about the ZTE-NBN scandal) stood on the Senate floor to defend his colleague Manuel Villar Jr. on the C-5 stink.  Few of his peers bothered to listen to Joker as he bewailed the “unfair” …

Get Real
by Solita Collas-Monsod
from Philippine Daily Inquirer
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100130-250236/Manny-Villar-blameless

WHILE the Senate is declaring a moratorium on the discussion of the ethics case against Sen. Manny Villar, here are some incontrovertible facts, presented in Q & A form. The source of the information is also given.
Question: What roadway projects are the subject matter of the Villar ethics controversy? Answer: 1. The Manila Cavite Toll Expressway Project (MCTEP), the original C-5 south extension project, linking SLEX with the Coastal Road; 2. the DPWH C-5 Extension project (CX-5), which together with 3. the Las Piñas-Parañaque …

Unparliamentary
 
NO HOLDS BARRED
by Armida Siguion-Reyna
from Tribune

The Senate may be on “cease fire” to correctly focus on approving urgent bills on hand before the election break, but it will take longer for the public to forget who said what and how what was said in defense of Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. It won’t help for some to deny their utterances, for it was on TV as it was happening, on TV news later in the evening, and now I hear available for instant and constant replay on the Internet’s YouTube.
 
I had …

FRANKLY SPEAKING
by Frank Wenceslao
 
An LA Times news item (Jan. 26) hit close to the Philippine Senate to demonstrate what will happen to Sen. Manuel Villar if he were like Mayor Roosevelt F. Dorn who pleaded guilty to a public corruption charge after earning acclaim and criticism as a juvenile court judge and was an equally polarizing figure in more than a decade as Inglewood city mayor.
“The plea ends a political career that saw significant drops in crime, as well as Inglewood’s attempt to bounce back from the loss of the …

With Due Respect
by Artemio V. Panganiban
from Philippine Daily Inquirer
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100116-247742/Stop-demonizing-the-Supreme-Court
MANILA, Philippines—I was advised not to worry about the delays in the “physical” preparations for the 2010 polls and the logistical nightmares I wrote about last week. I was assured that Comelec has contingency plans to manually count the automated ballots.
Inadequate contingency plans. With due respect, I believe these plans are sorely inadequate. For example, if the wrong automated ballots are delivered to the wrong town, all the voters there would be disenfranchised because the candidates printed on the ballots cannot be …

by Sophia Dedace/KBK
from GMANews.TV
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/182878/arroyo-ready-for-lawsuits-in-chief-justice-issue
Despite the supposed constitutional ban on “midnight appointments” by an outgoing chief executive, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will appoint the next chief justice even if it costs her lawsuits and a further drop in her popularity ratings, a Malacañang official said on Sunday.
Deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said President Arroyo will make the appointment even without the shortlist from the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), the body that screens nominees for vacant judicial posts.
“The time is not yet ripe because the JBC list has not yet reached …

by Aurea Calica
from The Philippine Star
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=545122&publicationSubCategoryId=63

MANILA, Philippines – Presidential candidates vowed to have President Arroyo prosecuted for her alleged misdeeds, except – not surprisingly – her party’s bet Gilbert Teodoro Jr.
The candidates voiced their stand during the ANC Youth 2010 presidential forum held at the De La Salle University (DLSU) in Manila yesterday. They were responding to a question from forum moderator Ted Failon on whether prosecuting Mrs. Arroyo would be part of their agenda if elected.
Former President Joseph Estrada did not attend the forum, saying he had to do …

by Erick San Juan
 
A recent audio message of Osama bin Laden was aired recently over al-Jazeera satellite television claiming the failed bombing of US airliner in flight to Detroit last December 25, 2009 by a certain Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national,. Here we go again, as I have written a couple of times before that Osama bin dead and should stay that way. But the players of the Al Qaeda (and Osama) card kept on resurrecting this so-called “mastermind” of 9-11 attack. It took them a month (delayed reaction) …

Balitang Kutsero
By Perry Diaz
Recently, Sen. Joker Arroyo compared the situation faced by his friend Sen. Manuel “Titanic Manny” Villar to what the martyred Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. faced during the martial law era. No kidding! Let’s see. Ninoy said, “The Filipino is worth dying for,” and he did. Titanic Manny can say, “The Filipino is worth getting rich for.” He is now filthy rich… and getting richer every minute of the day. Indeed, there is a comparison.
I don’t blame Ninoy’s son, presidential wannabe Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, for …

Theres The Rub
by Conrado de Quiros
from Philippine Daily Inquirer
It’s almost enough to make you believe in an invisible hand that guides human affairs. Twice already the best laid plots of mice and Manny have been thwarted by an unexpected turn of events. Unexpected at least from his end.

The first was Cory Aquino dying and reviving something everyone thought was dead. Before that, Manny Villar was the leading presidential candidate, aided in no small way by a culture of apathy that made people settle for the lesser evil, the mediocre, the …