Mabini Hall

This city law is long overdue. It regulates the selling and serving of liquor and alcoholic beverages in licensed establishments. In many countries worldwide, the sale of alcohol is heavily monitored. Alcohol licenses are limited and difficult to get. In the Philippines, anyone can just start selling alcohol to anyone, anytime. In fact, our babies learn to drink from their bib bottles before they walk. Read the rest

The other title to this article is “To convert or not to convert.” With the effective doubling of fuel prices, I am referring to the conversion of vehicles to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to save on gas. The cost of conversion ranges from P37,000 to P60,000 depending on the type of vehicle. Read the rest

There is nothing so fantastic and so heartening than a letter to the President of the Republic of the Philippines. It is directly addressed to the highest and most powerful officer of the land, President Gloria Arroyo, with the one-line address of Malacañang Palace, Manila. How simple can it get—an ordinary citizen writing a complaint against an abuse or asking for help? Read the rest

Dead bodies are still floating but the blame game is already in full swing. Fingers are put to good use—pointing to everyone else for the ferry tragedy that caused the deaths of 800 innocent lives and a multiple of that for the shattered families. As with all investigations, talk shows and media reports, the issues get murkier.

Let’s sort this mess out, shall we? The basic document between the common carrier and the passengers is a contract of carriage. It is an agreement to safely transport passengers from point A to B as far as human care and foresight can provide, using the utmost diligence of very cautious persons with a due regard for all the circumstances. In legal jargon, the standard of care required is extraordinary diligence because of the public nature of the carrier. Read the rest

Let us first observe a few moments of silence for the safe return of our dear Ces Drilon and her cameraman Jimmy Encarnacion, freed from her captors after a week’s ordeal.

To begin with, these bandits we call “Abu Sayyaf” for lack of a better term to label them since they employ similar methods of violence and operate in the same geographical area. There is no evidence on the ground that it is the same dreaded ASG that until this incident has largely been neutralized, marginalized and almost banished from our national media, hence, our consciousness. Read the rest

Hell, yeah. In this day and age, everyone is a consumer. The only way to not be a consumer is to be a hermit. But even a hermit uses a cell phone these days to get inspirational messages. Just by reading this article, you are either a subscriber to the Manila Times or to an internet service provider for its electronic version. Read the rest

There are so many Koreans in the Philippines one has to visit Korea to find out why. Read the rest

A debt trap is like a mouse trap—once caught in it, one hardly gets out if at all. At least a mouse trap only catches mice. For people in a debt trap, it can be crippling like a terminal illness. That, my friends, is a major cause of the situation we are in. Read the rest