The world: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth’s husband, has passed away. So has DMX, American rapper. Big facebook breach reported, etc. Doesn’t seem like news, really. My phone number was among the data leaked. The country is still experiencing a surge in cases, hospitals and ICUs still bursting to capacity. Yet in spite of the crisis, the president has not been around. This has prompted questions of whether he’s still alive.
All entries tagged philippines.
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Apr 2021
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The on-site process
Got my first shot of the Sinovac vaccine earlier today at Pinyahan Elementary School in Quezon City. My appointment was for 9am, I arrived on-site a bit before 8:30am. There was a short queue outside, so I waited there for a bit.
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It’s April! Or as it’s otherwise known, March 2020 month 13. As is usual, we are suffering the sweltering summer heat. Also, it’s Easter Sunday, if that means anything to you. The world: Surprising almost no one, the PH government extended the ECQ lockdown in the NCR+ bubble. Anyone with half a brain could have told you that the one week ECQ was no way going to be enough, given what we know about the virus’ life cycle.
Mar 2021
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It’s the last weekend of March. It feels like the month went by quickly. The world: Local covid response: The government introduced the concept of an “NCR Plus” bubble last Monday, restricting travel in and out of the NCR and adjacent provinces, in response to the rising cases. Still, the daily counts kept rising, hitting record highs of almost 10k cases daily. Even before the dust has settled on the bubble response, they decided to announce last night a reversion to the stricter ECQ.
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The world: Over the past couple of days, our nationwide daily covid cases broke 7000+, the highest recorded so far. Have to be super careful when going out for errands. Not that I wasn’t being careful even before, mind you. Just now, government has announced we are still under GCQ (see my post about the PH quarantine levels), but with more restrictions, etc. Looks like they are still hesitant to provide a stronger lockdown which would require paying people to stay home so they don’t starve to death.
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Happy Pi Day! The world: It’s the one year anniversary of the world’s longest lockdown. In some kind of sick anniversary celebration, local covid cases are on the rise. Yesterday, 5000 new cases were reported, the highest daily rate in 6 months or so. And now a Philippine variant has been detected. Now is not the time to be complacent, we all need to be more careful. The government seems unwilling to impose another widespread ECQ and are focusing on targetted, granular lockdowns.
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March has begun. Did it ever really end? The world: Vaccination finally starts in the country, with initial donated batches of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccine arriving in the country. Just in time for the one year anniversary of the world’s longest lockdown. SinoVac isn’t the best choice, but many of my doctor friends say they’ll settle for it if that’s what’s available for them. I think QC is planning to use AstraZeneca for their citizens, but worrying is that AZ’s efficacy has been shown to be not so good against certain variants such as the South African one, which has already been detected in the country.
Feb 2021
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“please respect my belief that your beliefs are bullshit”
Jan 2021
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A while back I saw this tweet talking about drawing memes from before the internet, and I was reminded that was a thing we had around here too when we were kids! We had our own version of that “giraffe in the window” drawing, except the one I remember was made so that you could switch the answer to “cat hugging a pole outside the window” to troll whoever you were asking to guess:
Dec 2020
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Reply to 'Opismeyts: Patawad' on /r/Philippines:
Both the site (https://patawadpatawad.blogspot.com/) and the qr code are valid, props for that!
Aug 2020
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These weeknotes are coming in late in the day because of reasons. (The reasons being laziness and procrastination.) Actually, I feel like I’ve been kind of phoning in the weeknotes over the past few weeks, they’ve mostly been “hey, I’ve been busy, so nothing of significance happened, but here are some things I watched/played.” Supposedly one of the side effects of writing regular updates is that you tend to look out for more interesting things to do so you have something to write about, even on an unconscious level.
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Still kind of busy, although there’s a bunch of things I hope I can finally wrap up this week, so I can move on to the long list of other things I want to be doing. The world continues to be bleak, so I’m still hiding from it. My stuff: Forty-two. I thought about just merging these into a single post for the day, but nah, this seems better. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing.
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Kind of a busy week for me again, so the week kind of passed me by quickly. It’s August! In one month it will be (PH) Christmas season! It feels like July went by more quickly than other quarantine months. My stuff: A bit of consulting work. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing. I was hoping to finish all the changes last week and next week would be testing and deployment, but stuff got in the way (and estimates may have been a bit off), but the spillover is small and we should still be fine for finishing everything next week.
Jul 2020
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The world: hm. I was a bit busy this week, so I wasn’t paying too much attention, so I don’t have too much to rail against today. Well of course, things are still ongoing. There’s still the pandemic, fascist police state philosophy continues to rear it’s ugly head in the US, PH gov’t continues to be dumb, etc., but this week seemed a bit tame comparably. On 26 Jul 2020 12:00am I wrote: Pandemic thoughts and updates, July 26 edition:
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My country: There are days when I have to consciously temper my rage at the shenanigans of this government. I can’t write about them today. My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Had a busy work week again; at the same time I also picked up an older charity project where the client asked for UI updates. Had issues with running the old code, and it was small enough, so I decided to rewrite it in a new tech stack.
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My country: Friday afternoon the House of Representatives voted to deny the franchise application of the nation’s biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN. This despite all agencies of the executive testifying that the company had no violations. Justifications cited were mostly personal reasons. The Palace claims they remained neutral on this issue, but no one really believes that. Probably not even then. What now, Philippines? My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes.
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My country: Friday afternoon the president sighed the controversial “Anti-terror law” that vastly expands police powers, allows people to be arrested without warrants on mere suspicion of terrorism etc. Interesting timing, right after China applies a new anti-terror low to Hong Kong (and rightly gets castigated for it by countries all over the world) and also right after the PNP (who promise not to abuse their newfound powers) are under criticism for killing some soldiers in a misencounter and tampering with the crime scene to cover it up.
Jun 2020
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My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Easily the most annoying thing this week: our broadband modem conked out Wednesday night. Customer support isn’t super responsive for local telcos: I called their support line the next day (support line is not even available 24/7!), got put on hold for 45 minutes TWICE before they agreed to send a repair crew over the next day (Friday). Friday morning I got a text that the technician visit was actually scheduled for SATURDAY morning.
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My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Some days still hot, but weather beginning to turn for the better. Sleep kind of better and a bit more regular too. Did my quarterly medical checkup this past week (slightly delayed). No issues, but I need to do an FBS test for next time. Sleep schedule kind of settling back into my usual biphasic sleep. Although the second phase seems to move around a lot… Not much work-wise the past week, and a bit more family-related expenses.
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Surprisingly, no new crises have emerged during the past week. I think. More of the same crises, carrying on. Last Friday was the PH independence day holiday. I didn’t feel like celebrating. It doesn’t feel like we are free. In any case, a protest rally against the yet-to-be-signed terror bill took place at the university that morning, inspite of threats from the authorities that it wasn’t allowed. The protestors spaced themselves out and everything.
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The world isn’t letting up. The virus is still around, but both the US and my own country have gotten distracted. The US is in its second week of police brutality/black lives matters protests. Meanwhile, our government took on a sidequest of trying to enact a wide-ranging and easily abusable anti-terror bill, triggering some smaller (by comparison to the US). I haven’t written about the terror bill, mainly because I haven’t had the opportunity to dig into it too deeply.
May 2020
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A recent post on Cory Doctorow’s pluralistic blog had a really good take on the general worldview of “the right”, describing it as “mafia logic”. I’m going to quote a huge chunk of it here: This follows perfectly from the second definition. The purpose of the law is to protect the rightful rulers, so the law can’t – by definition – punish them. And it is “mafia logic.” Holbo was talking about Michael Gove – a UK Tory Minister – excusing his the Prime Minister’s advisor Dominick Cummings repeatedly breaking the quarantine rules that Cummings is responsible for creating and enforcing.
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A bit of brouhaha a couple of weeks ago after the National Telecommunications Commission ordered the country’s biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN to cease operations because Congress had been remiss in renewing their franchise.. This despite the NTC earlier promising they can operate provisionally while the franchise renewal is being processed, a change of heart apparently due to a legal opinion by the SolGen. Some thoughts: “Bias” The speaker of the house says:
Mar 2020
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I originally had this as a tweetstorm/rant, but it ended up quite long, so I’m posting it to the blog too. It is mostly frustration at how poorly the people in charge are handling things. Instead of asking for more budget, the govt should be telling us first how they are planning to spend the money they are already allocated, which they claimed was sufficient. Instead of saying we can’t do mass testing because of limited kits, they should be telling us about their plans for getting more testing kits, ppes, hospital capacity, etc.
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This post will largely be about the effects of the COVID-19 virus on my country, the Philippines, including government and society’s response, largely from a personal POV. It’s actually a bit difficult to write about, but I figure it’s something I would like to be able to look back on in the future, so let’s give it a shot. The reason it’s difficult to write about is that events are unfolding and changing rapidly, and a lot of things are still unclear.
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I mean, overcrowding shouldn’t be allowed regardless of outbreaks
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Since I stopped being a full-time employee at the end of 2015, I’ve missed around four years of monthly SSS payments. This isn’t really that big a deal, since I’ve already paid more than 10 years of premiums, I’m already guaranteed to get a pension from SSS when I reach retirement age. However, this past January I decided to resume making SSS premium payments on a voluntary basis. I had to research a bit and ask some friends about the whole process, so I thought I’d document it here both for my own recollection and in case someone finds it useful.
Feb 2020
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I watched a little bit of the Senate hearing yesterday on the ABS-CBN franchise renewal issues. One of the senators, a known lackey of the president claimed that while the president was not vindictive, “kung masama ka sa kanya, masama din sya sa yo” (I’m not sure the senator understood what vindictive means). One of the ABS head honchos later made a statement that they were “sorry if they had offended the president” even though they were just following all the relevant laws, or something to that effect.
Dec 2019
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Reply to a comment by eyyt08 on 'Ask me anything about Philippine taxation! 13.12.19' on /r/Philippines:
Thanks for your reply, but I’m still not clear on the “employer-employee relationship part.
For example, a contractual part-time service worker in a fast food chain, he is not considered a regular employee is this correct? Is he required to register as a business? (I assume no.) Is he deduced the 8% withholding tax or the regular income tax?
How is this different from the scenario where you are a consultant working as a contractor for a local (PH) client (say, as a graphic designer or software developer)? Is the consultant considered an employee? Is he required to register as a business?
Also, I’ve worked for a number of clients as a consultant under contract, and they always just withhold the 8% and when I ask if there’s anything else I need to do for tax purposes, they never advise me that I need a business permit. Should their accountant been telling them otherwise?
> Recurring like, you expect to engage in that particular kind of transaction for more than 1 time
-> does that mean if you are only doing this once, it is not considered recurring? i.e. a client asks me to build an application for them and I receive a one-time payment from them upon delivery and afterwards we no longer have a relationship, in this scenario you do not have to register as a business?
Sorry for all the follow-ups, I just want to clearly understand the scenarios wherein I would or would not be required to register as a business, because honestly I would like to avoid the bureaucracy as much as possible, hence I prefer not to register as a business if it can be avoided. I understand our duty as citizens to pay the right taxes etc and I would like to make sure I comply with any requirements and I don’t mind the withholding tax being deducted from me. But I would prefer to know under what conditions I could structure freelance/consultant work without having to register as a business.
BTW, I wanted to say I appreciate your answering these questions. I had been planning to look for an accountant to consult on related matters so this thread really helps.
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> 1. Should I register as a self-employed /business?
Only if you are earning recurring income not earned under an employer-employee relationship.Please explain “recurring income” here? What if I am earning money not on a full-time basis, with no guarantee of recurring income? For example, a company consults with me and I get paid an hourly fee.
Please also explain “employer-employee relationship”. I was previously working as a consultant with a company, and they were deducting the withholding tax from me (I think it was 8%). My understanding is I was not an actual employee here since I was a consultant, should I have been registered as a business in this instance? It’s just weird since this withholding tax was already reported to the BIR and it seems there was no issue.
Nov 2019
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A quick follow-up to something I mentioned in yesterday’s post: It is a cultural problem too. Even we the citizens have little respect for rules and laws and try to skip around them when we can. This is why we have fixers, and connections, and patronage. We trade on favors to get us out of trouble. I’m not sure if needed to be said, but I wasn’t saying that literally every single person participates in fixing and patronage to get around the rules.
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In yet another example of what is wrong with this country, the PNP are planning to arrest vape users after Duterte’s directive, despite there actually being yet no law or executive order banning vaping. Thus, the arrests are meaningless and merely another form of harassment. PNP spokesman Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac explained that while violators would be apprehended, they would be released immediately after the incident is recorded in the police blotter.
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No one can answer this because no law, ordinance or executive order has been released detailing the rules. Basically its the whim of the authorities
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So the Philippine Competition Commission recently fined rideshare provider Grab P23M for overcharging their customers. Apparently only P5M of that is meant to go back to the affected riders, which seems like a piddly amount considering the number of riders in the Philippines. We’ll see how of that I actually get credited back, if any. Grab pricing has been steadily increasing since Uber exited the market early last year. The other day Grab wanted to charge me a bit over P400 for a 13km ride to a commercial area, which seemed insane.
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It’s a lot more uncommon for me to go to places like Ortigas or Makati nowadays, but when I do I almost always take the P2P bus. The P2P (Point-to-Point) buses were introduced in Metro Manila I think around late 2015/early 2016, as a pricier alternative to the usual city buses. The fares are more expensive, but the buses are also much more comfortable and they don’t make stops along their route, only at the endpoints, so their travel time is faster compared to the usual city buses.
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Something I haven’t done in a while: travel with my parents to Bicol to pay respects to our ancestors during the undas long weekend. In fact, the last time I made this trip was back in 2004, 15 years ago! (I technically also visited Bicol about 11ish years ago, but that was via a flight to Legaspi, Albay, and not to my dad’s hometown.) My Dad’s hometown is in Daet, Camarines Norte, and that’s also where my grandparents are buried.
Oct 2019
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This kind of logic reminds me of https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1330819-webcomics
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(Note: This post discusses the traffic situation in Metro Manila. I’ve had this post in the works for a while, and it kept getting longer and longer (possibly my longest post to date). I also had my friend David review it first to make sure I wasn’t saying anything too ridiculous, and he and I discussed some of the things and some of his points made it into the final post.
Jul 2019
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Reply to 'EDSA Shrine' on /r/Philippines:
was this shot taken from the flyover
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Save as much as you can.
Don’t worry too much about what other people think.
Don’t compare yourself to other people, be your own person.
Be kind.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
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Reply to 'Tips on dealing with PLDT, 4 months no internet asking us to pay for it' on /r/Philippines:
Visit one of their offices in person (we went to the one along east avenue) instead of calling their cs. Its better if you documented your calls, have ticket numbers etc.
Jun 2019
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Where do you get your old pics?
May 2019
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We had a NES, my parents bought it when my mom’s work sponsored a US trip for them. IDK what the price was. Problematic lang was that NES games were harder and more expensive to buy locally, and all your friends had Famicoms so mahirap ang gamesharing. Yung mga bootleg collections pati na “1000 in 1” etc available only as Famicom cartridges. Luckily, nagkaron ng binebenta na “Honeybee” adapter that let you use Famicom cartridges in a NES. I played a lot of the NES classics, all the legit Marios (there some random BS bootleg “Super Mario 4” that sometimes appeared), Castlevanias, Legend of Zelda (I had to borrow a NES original for this one, mahirap maghanap ng original Famicom cartridge kasi the cart needed its own battery for saving), Contra 1 and 2, Adventure Island etc etc. Kahit yung mga small games na nasa mga 16-in-1/100-in-1/etc like Popeye, Baseball, etc naging expert din ako lol. Pag bata ka madami kang time e
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I remember when playing the original version of Civilization back in the day, the “most advanced” form of government was Democracy, with the only downside of it being you can’t declare war (because you had a senate that would stop you.) The other available forms of government were typically not very useful, but Democracy massively increased your trade output, so most often I would build the Pyramids (a wonder which allowed switching to any government immediately and without penalty), and spend the rest of the game toggling between Democracy and Despotism (for when I wanted to go to war).
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Reply to a comment by [deleted] on 'Are there real admin supporters here on r/ph?' on /r/Philippines:
Um, that’s not true. Accepting the results of a democratic vote is different from supporting it. i.e. Even if 99% of the country voted for the death penalty to be reinstated, you are still allowed to object to it (even though that may have little use) and to work to change the public opinion.
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Reply to a comment by dandans0y on 'Are there real admin supporters here on r/ph?' on /r/Philippines:
Let’s not forget who controls the police and military back then.. wasn’t it Fidel Marcos and JPE?
Actually, Fabian Ver was in charge of the military. From wikipedia: " As Marcos disregarded the authority of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in the 1980s, he changed the military chain of command. Under the new chain of command, the authority would evolve from Marcos as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces up to Ver, the chief of staff of the armed forces. "
Re: Marcoses, do you mean that you don’t think they are corrupt? You don’t think that Imee Marcos had Archimedes Trajano killed for speaking up against her? (There is already a court judgment on this)
> People get fired and cases were filed iirc. Do you have anyone in mind? I have some means to get information.
Yung example ko above were the Tulfos? Is there any case against them now? I think the former sec of justice was also removed for some shenanigans, I forget his name, yung may wig? Ano nangyari sa kanya? Yan lang mga examples. Meron pa mga iba na tatanggalin nya for issues supposedly tapos irerecycle lang sa ibang position, like Faeldon or La Vina.
> They don’t offer alternative solution. And if they did, I didn’t hear about it.
Si Chel Diokno primarily judicial reform ang focus nya, since he is a lawyer. It is easy to search for it, here’s the first article I found: https://www.bworldonline.com/why-everyone-should-vote-for-chel-diokno/
“From his diagnostics, Chel has offered a coherent set of policy and institutional reforms. The reforms he champions include the following:
• The insulation of justices, judges, and prosecutors from partisan politics;
• The filling up of vacancies in the trial courts and prosecution agency by recruiting the most competent lawyers who possess integrity;
• The simplification of the rules on evidence and procedure;
• The reorientation of performance standard for the police and prosecution toward achieving high conviction rates;
• The creation of transparent information and monitoring system to track cases and convictions;
• The transfer of police’s disciplinary jurisdiction to the Civil Service Commission;
• The expansion of the Ombudsman’s scope to investigate justices and judges;
• The strengthening of the law on witness protection by allowing the perpetuation of testimonies of whistleblowers.”
I largely agree with this because I believe problems with the judicial system are one of the primary systemic problems in the country, facilitating corruption and delaying or outright denying justice especially to those with fewer resources. My impression is that this admin has shown little interest in improving judicial processes at all (despite the President being a former prosecutor who supposedly knows all the problems in the processes). Imagine if the so-called “intelligence fund” and/or political will was applied not just to identifying supposed drug users but instead to identifying corrupt judges, prosecutors, law enforcers, etc.
First, I would suggest that you watch the full speech for all the instances the president expressed support for all the topics listed above. Again, half truths are the best lies.
Pinapanood ko naman lahat. Are you saying hindi naman yun sinasabi nung president? Also, I’m not clear whether you are saying the media is engaged in half truths/lies or the president is?
Don’t trust the media too much.
In the same vein, I think we should not trust any politician too much, whether we supported them or not. Discernment should apply to all sources, and even in cases where you trust someone, “Trust, but verify” should apply.
Thank you for responding!
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Hello! Thank you for responding!
Re: China, I don’t think there are only two options where it is either war or bilateral relations. We can maintain bilateral relations while at the same time asserting our rights. I believe Indonesia has blown up Chinese fishing boats they have caught illegally fishing in their claimed territories, yet there is no talk of war being declared there. China will not go into a war with us over the WPS, this is an unfounded fear; they have not even started any hostilities over Taiwan despite decades of saber-rattling. I think the main reason this admin is afraid to piss off China is that their programs have become dependent on Chinese loans since Duterte dislikes loans from western countries that come with silly conditions like needing to abide by human rights etc
Re: Rappler, I agree they have a particular style of journalism, but I think this is more of the nature of people online being more attracted to clickbait-y articles than any actual bias against Duterte specifically. Even during the time of PNoy, they would have various articles criticizing him. It is the nature of the press to highlight problems and scandals, since this acts as a check on power. I think also the admin supporters have some level of selective bias as well in that they only see or remember those articles critical of the administration. The top article on the Rappler.com frontpage right now is “Philippines recalls envoys after Canada misses deadline for garbage shipment” which is surely positive for the admin. I think you would also agree that compared to the past admin, the current admin also tends to say more controversial things/statements which are more likely to make the news cycle, which furthers the sense of ‘bias’.
Thank you again for the discussion. What I generally see is that there is some sort of divide over idealistic/morally-driven views vs more pragmatic/“we need to get things done” views. Ultima
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How do you feel about the liberal party? If you hate them, why? I personally feel they are no more worse than other poltical parties like the NPC, Lakas-CMD, PDP-LABAN etc
In what timeline of the liberal party’s existence are you referring to?
Sorry, I missed this one. I mean more like moving forward. Would you automatically reject any candidate backed by the liberal party or something like that? Is it mainly because of what you perceive as involvement with “the Reds” as you say
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Thank you for replying! Some follow-ups, if I may:
Three words. Geopolitical Power Play
Should I take this to mean you are okay with his tolerance of China’s taking over our islands?
Why the hell would I convince you to support him? I can only present from my own perspective and that’s about it. It’s you who should decide whether you support him or not.
I’m not expecting you to be able to convince me. For me, the purpose of this exercise is to foster more understanding across divides; maybe you have something you can say that would be able to convince the skeptics to support the president or at least improve their appreciation of him. It’s okay if you don’t have any such statement. But would you not think it’s important for Filipinos to have a better understanding of where our fellow citizens are coming from? Or convincing other people to understand your perspective better is not a priority for you? This part is not a criticism - you have certainly been generous with your replies; but I have observed that few people are willing to reach out to those they tag as “dilawan” etc to explain their POV, so I wonder if people just don’t care about that kind of thing.
> What would be a dealbreaker for you
Would you have a response for this part?
> Ugh. As I said. Everyone is in cahoots for political favors. It always has been.
Given this and some other things in your response, my main takeaway is that you believe that Duterte is just being honest with how things are in reality, and that the issues people have with him are issues that would be true regardless of whoever is in power. Would this be accurate?
If the above is accurate, do you think we (as a country) deserve better? Would it be better to have leadership that does not use rhetoric to glorify the bad things about our reality?
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Reply to a comment by Colencence on 'Are there real admin supporters here on r/ph?' on /r/Philippines:
Marawi
Wasn’t Marawi devastated and until now hindi pa nakakarecover? As I recall, Zamboanga siege happened during PNoy’s time, do you think that was mishandled? (I honestly don’t remember)