Watch her zigzag through the urban maze here.

As I biked with Iya virtually, her laps and turns and stops reminded me of a U2 song, “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Depending on how you’ve soaked in U2 history, the song is an ode to breaking free or to a world not segregated according to wealthy or filthy streets. The Philippines is one of the most class-conscious societies in the world, as eminent writer and teacher Butch Dalisay told us in this interview, and there’s no better proof of this than the streets where we live.

It doesn’t take much to realize it. If you live in an upper middle-class neighborhood, you’d have no trouble finding bike lanes for your daily exercise. A wealthy, well-managed city such as Iloilo City, named top bike-friendly city in 2021, can offer a bike tour – something that other cities are unable to. Iya herself concluded that Taguig, in particular, the elite BGC enclave, scored high in the bike-friendly department in the metro.

Why are there no sufficient spaces for bikes and more accessible means of transport? Again, class. As Iya’s investigation showed, our roads are built and maintained for private, not mass, transport, to the extent that they have become extended parking areas for cars. The biggest obstacle to a safe bike journey is the number of parked vehicles along Metro Manila’s major streets, according to Iya’s report. It’s after all an undeniable fact that most cities and towns have a bias for cars and private vehicles.

But it’s never too late to reimagine our cities.

The COVID-19 lockdown gave rise to pop-up bike lanes, and our daily traffic nightmare that’s costing us sanity and money is pushing us to look collectively for solutions.

• Over a third of Philippine households now use bikes, according to a Social Weather Stations survey in March 2023.
• A new generation of young adults is cycling toward sustainable communities. Read about it here.
• But as this story points out, can the Metro Manila cycling boom survive a revenge in car buying?
• With a tighter budget for bike lanes and pedestrians this year, the transportation department is nonetheless pushing through with the construction of the EDSA Greenways Project. It’s funded by a $123-million loan from the Asian Development Bank.
• How can you start pocket parks and people’s streets in your communities? Rappler’s community lead Pia Ranada-Robles tells us about it in this story.

Beyond the need for more lanes for active transport is the gaping hole in the country’s mass transport system. A few, even if delayed, fixes are being done, however.

Rappler’s Lance Spencer Yu gives us a tour of the initial construction phase of the Metro Manila Subway. Watch his report from 38 meters below the ground at the subway’s North Avenue Station in Quezon City. How will the 33-kilometer subway work once done? Here’s a guide to its 17 stations.

Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for modernization: the Philippine National Railways will cease operations for at least five years, starting on March 28, to give way to the construction of the North-South Commuter Railway.

Will our roads – and therefore lives – get better in the coming years? We, at Rappler, don’t only hope for that, we’d like to do our part in making our cities liveable by starting with a campaign to #MakeManilaLiveable. We have created a dedicated space for stories and reports about the liveability of Philippine cities. Check out this page. For meaningful conversations on what we can all do together, join our chat room on liveable cities – but you first need to download the Rappler app (on iOS; on Android).

Let’s do this – one city at a time. – Rappler.com

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On March 4, 2024, we are reminded of this by the first anniversary of the brazen murder of Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo.

Around breakfast time, Degamo and nine others were shot down by men carrying high-powered guns in his own residence in Pamplona town, Negros Oriental.

The alleged mastermind, no less than a former district representative, is a fugitive on foreign soil, after being declared a terrorist by the Philippine government. Disgraced politician Arnolfo Teves was found by authorities to have led a group that had everything from an organizational structure to operational funding. One other supposed member of the group bore his last name.

But the Degamo slay is just one of the most high-profile of killings that have long stained the Visayan island’s sugar cane fields and small town streets.

It was just a headline-grabbing manifestation of what Bishop Gerry Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos City rightly called a “violence-prone political culture.”

Justice remains elusive, not just for Degamo, but for the red-tagged lawyers, journalists, students, and hacienda workers and farmers murdered on the island. 

Alminaza, Erwin Delilan writes, has called for more effective gun regulation to end “gun culture,” disbanding private armies, and stopping the “bodyguard system.” Political dynasties have long benefited from this culture of violence. They should go too, says the religious leader.

Violence needs the right conditions to breed. In Negros Island, poverty, hunger, and land conflicts have provided fertile soil for the culture of violence and impunity to take root.

At no other time was this more evident than during the dictatorship of the current president’s father. Veteran journalist Inday Espina-Varona wrote that, in the 1980s, Negros was the “apex of brutality and corruption” under the Marcos regime.

Horrific images of Negros’ starved children emerged from a time when Marcos Sr.’s cronies plundered the island’s sugar industry. Bankrupt sugar producers abandoned their estates, leaving an estimated 190,000 sugar workers without income. 

The country’s sugar bowl exploded with violence. Soldiers and private armies of Marcos cronies gunned down an untold number of civilians, amid mass protests against government repression and corruption.

Justice for the slain and addressing the social ills that fuel bloodshed are necessary steps that the new Marcos in Malacañang must take. While President Marcos remains cynical about whether the International Criminal Court should probe his predecessor’s Davao drug killings, justice remains elusive for the families of the slain. 

And in Negros, communities continue to fear impunity because no concrete steps have been taken to undo the systems that have allowed violence to take root. – Rappler.com

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Last Tuesday, February 27, a post about a Filipino passenger with bed bug bites at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) went viral, prompting an apology from the agency that manages the terminals – and a decision to remove the bug-infested chairs. 

These are no ordinary items. Made of rattan, the chairs were installed in April 2023 at NAIA Terminal 2, as part of a Filipino-inspired renovation that included solihiya lamps and panels and mini-gardens – a joint project by the Department of Tourism and the Department of Transportation. Oh, what a delight to see! 

One would have thought, though, that wooden materials are most vulnerable to the surot that infects our daily lives. Which means they needed more attention and care. But airport management said they were not remiss, insisting that both terminals 2 (where the rattan chairs are) and 3 (where surot was also found in non-rattan chairs) went through regular deep disinfection. So perhaps, said a pest control official at NAIA in an interview with GMA’s Mariz Umali, the pests were… “imported.” 

Let’s let that pass. This seemingly trivial issue should not be trivialized, however. The bug story reinforces NAIA’s bad rep in the world.

• NAIA is ranked Asia’s fourth worst airport. As business reporter Lance Spencer Yu asked in this story, can its new operator – San Miguel and the Incheon International Airport Corporation – turn it around? 
• Why should these surot-infested chairs matter? It’s all about customer experience, wrote senior editor Isagani de Castro Jr. The Philippines continues to lag behind neighbors in tourist arrivals, with only 5 million in 2023. “Positive experience in airports is an important factor in getting tourists to come – and visit again – since it’s the first main space that travelers have experiences within a country or territory,” De Castro wrote in “Why airport ‘surot’ and Taylor Swift matter.”
• Outside NAIA, horror stories persist. Just last December, the Land Transportation Office slapped a 90-day preventive suspension on the license of a cab driver who had been charging P10,000 upwards (roughly $180) for rides from NAIA. 

Speaking of airports and Taylor Swift, who’s in Singapore until March 9 for her The Eras Tour (here’s the ultimate guide to the concerts), Filipino Swifties got scammed on Facebook by someone who sold tickets to Taylor’s Singapore gigs. This gave online marketplace Carousell no choice but to suspend its ticket sales until March 9 in six Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines. 

And speaking of scams. We were alerted to a deepfake video of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa that showed her purportedly promoting Bitcoin. This was circulated on Facebook and through an ad on Microsoft’s Bing platform. In this story by Rappler’s Gemma Mendoza and Gelo Gonzales, we can see how a Russian scam network circulated the fake video. In particular:

• Qurium, which helped us investigate what happened, said a timezone timestamp of the links showed a “solid indication” that the network is of Russian origin.
• The pages where the fake videos were posted were designed to be viewed only through Philippine internet service providers.

Deepfake videos are powerful tools of deceit and manipulation.

• In Indonesia, deepfakes had been used in the lead-up to the February presidential elections.
• In taking stock of 2023 and insights for 2024, we raised concern about the increasing use of deepfake videos and the growing reliance on artificial intelligence for disinformation. Read about it here.

As we fret over airport bugs, scammers, and fakers, Gaza continues to burn beyond recognition and suffer beyond grief. 

On February 29, Israeli forces shot dead more than 100 Palestinians who were lining up for an aid delivery – the biggest single-day loss of civilian lives in weeks. We thought we’d gotten used to devastating images from Gaza by now, but last week’s pictures were gut-wrenching, making us doubt our humanity and question any promise of a path forward. 

The Palestinian death toll has already passed the 30,000 mark. The United Nations warned last week that a quarter of the population in Gaza – at least 576,000 people – are one step away from famine. US Vice President Kamala Harris pressed Israel to address this “humanitarian catastrophe,” in one of the strongest statements on the issue by a US official – but what does that even mean? Where lies hope? – Rappler.com

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One would think that government lawyers would be more aware and mindful of rules that govern ethical behavior in professional settings – more so in public office. We expect them to be more circumspect, conscious about their image, reputation, and respectability because they are, after all, public servants who are paid using taxpayers’ money. Of course, we know of one lawyer who once occupied the highest position in the land and who shamelessly cared nothing about image nor respectability. He set the bar for government officials so low it became acceptable to be crude, rude, even degenerate.

It was shocking, to put it mildly, to read about Lian Buan’s account of the attempted sexual exploits of an assistant solicitor general in 2022. Unfortunately for him, the two male legal interns who were at the receiving end of his misbehavior filed sexual harassment charges. I will not go into the disgusting details of the complaint, you can read them in Lian’s story in case you missed it: Malacañang fires assistant solicitor general for sexual harassment.

Malacañang has fired the official after administrative cases were filed against him. Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, who had recommended dismissal, has appointed an OIC or officer in charge even as the reprobate official has appealed the decision. As it turns out, the same official had been arrested in the US way back in late 2016 when Jose Calida was solicitor general under former president Rodrigo Duterte. For supposedly molesting a 13-year-old boy, then-assistant solicitor general Derek Puertollano was charged with sexual abuse of a minor. Even more embarrassing was that this happened while he was in the US on official time to attend a seminar on international arbitration. 

The Philippines’ Republic Act 7877, or the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995, became law under former president Fidel V. Ramos. The Philippine Commission on Women on its website says that penalties range from a minimum one-month imprisonment to not more than six months, or a fine of not less than P10,000 nor more than P20,000, “or both such fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the court.” Violations prescribe in three years. The OSG case also shows that sexual harassment victims are not only female, they can also be male. 

Close to three decades later, the penalties seem like a mere slap on the wrist. The law certainly needs revisiting and updating – it wasn’t a sufficient deterrent to the OSG sexual offender.

ABSENTEEISM. Still on the conduct of government officials, ever wondered if there ought to be penalties too for excessive absenteeism? In college, students are given a maximum number of absences or cuts, beyond which they are considered “over cut.” They then get failing marks or need to withdraw from the class “with permission.” 

No such thing for legislators, unfortunately. Senate records showed that Senator Alan Peter Cayetano was tops in absences, having attended only 36 of 54 regular sessions held from July 24, 2023, until February 21, 2024, Senate reporter Bonz Magsambol wrote. Of the 18 sessions missed, four were on account of being on official missions. Fair enough. But what of the 14 other absences? Maybe excuse letters ought to be required, too, to explain what work is being done outside session hours?

Honestly, I had almost forgotten that Cayetano was a sitting senator. But I do remember him as Duterte’s vice presidential candidate who lost to Leni Robredo in the 2016 elections. Cayetano won in the 2022 senatorial elections, placing seventh with over 19 million votes, equivalent to about 34.74% of the votes cast for senators. The gentleman from Taguig has earned the distinction of having bested ex-senator Manny Pacquiao who, before him, held the record of having the most absences. 

MARCOS PA RIN. As February comes to a close, we recall the special days of 1986 when freedom-loving Filipinos bravely stood up to a dictator and faced tanks and soldiers who could very well have shot them down – had orders been given to do so. Whatever else is said about the People Power revolution, it was undeniably a shining example to the world of what peaceful, determined, and fearless protest can do and achieve. It also showed the invincible force that politics and faith can be when jointly motivated by an intense desire to fight for the greater common good.

Thirty-eight years after that bold demonstration of utter selflessness by the crowds that spontaneously swelled on EDSA, the cynics would probably scoff at the four days of February 22 to 25 that historical revisionism has downgraded and diminished. What better proof of this diminution than the return of the Marcoses to political power? But no matter what, the truth will always shine through. 

Researcher Patrick Cruz painstakingly traced, tracked, and mapped family members or associates of the Marcoses who have been elected to public office. Read his story: 38 years after EDSA People Power Revolt: Marcos political dynasty is well-entrenched. Here are other EDSA-related stories you might have missed:

• Church without Sin: A weaker Catholic Church faces a second Marcos 
• How Cory Aquino, Cardinal Sin blocked Cha-Cha a decade after EDSA
• Marcos gov’t offers muted celebration of EDSA People Power’s 38th anniversary

FINALE. Today marks an extra day this February. An occurrence every four years, this leap year will happen again in 2028, when presidential elections will be held. Make the most out of this extra, final day of this month. Take some time to drop me a note to share your thoughts.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to download the Rappler app on iOS or Google Play and choose to join one or several community chat rooms that are safe spaces to exchange thoughts and ideas about whatever interests you. Help us spread the word!

Till Thursday after next. Help us continue doing our work well by supporting independent and quality journalism. – Rappler.com

The length of my blue uniform skirt, the collar of my white blouse, the way I tucked it in, the width of its blue ribbon – these were my everyday concerns as a journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) from 1981 to 1985. I remember mornings of standing behind girls who would be refused entry at the college building’s gate because their uniform skirts showed a teeny-weeny sight of their knees. There would be endless chatter about it in class all day. At some point, we girls did a workaround: we would wear knee-length skirts for a smooth entry through the gate but as soon as we got inside our rooms, we’d fold our skirts upward, pushing them above the knee, and sashayed on the corridors with glee. We did this for vanity, yes, but also to rebel against an archaic rule that did not make sense. 

Then sometime in 1983, it was the boys’ turn to rage. UST’s Faculty of Arts and Letters suddenly banned maong (jeans) for the boys and ordered them to wear only slacks. As for us girls, we should stick to pleated skirts and not play with other designs, the Faculty added. We would all look more decent in them, we were told. 

The gods of España thought this was just one of those regimented things that students would eventually get used to. But, oh boy, did they get it wrong! Our seniors organized massive protests against the maong ban, went room to room to gather signatures for a petition against it, and used the issue to recruit members to an activist group, the Youth for the Advancement of Faith and Justice (YAFJ). Thousands signed the petition, which upset the Dean who told the organizers they would be dropped from the rolls and not graduate. Unperturbed, the organizers upped the ante and called on students to boycott their classes for two days, which culminated in a massive and noisy rally that saw the boys burning slacks in between fiery speeches against “clerico-fascists.”

The gods blinked. The Dean withdrew the new uniform policy. As for the YAFJ organizers, they went on to win the student council elections months later.

I can’t think of a better context for today’s furor in UST. Asia’s oldest university is caught in a battle with students over its fixation with school uniforms – a fixation that is deeply embedded in the DNA of the sprawling campus along España in Manila since Spanish colonial masters founded it 400-plus years ago.

On February 15, UST’s Office of Student Affairs (OSA) ordered a campus organization’s news site, TomasinoWeb, to take down a photo that showed students from the College of Information and Computing Sciences in one frame with staffers of a 7-Eleven store. Their uniforms looked the same, but an ordinary reader would not even notice it – nor care. The OSA believed otherwise, saying it subjected UST and its students to “public ridicule.”

TomasinoWeb stood by its editorial judgment to use the photo but OSA forced them to remove it from the site. After the takedown, TomasinoWeb’s adviser, journalist Leo Laparan II, resigned. Why would he not? As the Varsitarian’s editor in chief pointed out in this piece, the appointment of a practicing journalist as adviser of TomasinoWeb indicated the university’s acknowledgment that it should be run as an independent media organization.

That photo takedown has taken a life of its own.

• Hundreds of UST alumni started an online petition that takes UST to task for a “systemic problem of campus repression” and calls on the university to remove those who mishandled the situation – “people without competence to properly handle organizations, compassion for the welfare of students, and commitment to ensure that UST is a space where students’ democratic rights are protected and upheld.” 
• As of posting, the petition has gathered close to a thousand signatures. If you want to sign and #StandWithTomasinoWeb, here is the link.
• The Flame, which is the Faculty of Arts and Letters’ official publication (of which I’m its proud former news editor), continued to carry the photo on its site up to Monday morning, February 26. I checked the site at 9 am and it was still up; by 9:38 am, it’s been replaced with some logo. The resigned TomasinoWeb adviser earlier told The Flame he was forced to remove the photo from the Tomasino website and as such, “my being a journalist was trampled upon.” The order was a “glaring illustration of censorship,” he added. 
• Rappler’s community lead Pia Ranada-Robles sat down with Leo, who said that this was the fifth time that OSA tried to censor TomasinoWeb and that administrators apparently have not been pleased with the site for quite sometime now (without an adviser, TomasinoWeb cannot operate, per UST rules). Watch this episode of the Be The Good show here.
• The editor in chief of The Varsitarian, UST’s official publication, lambasted OSA’s takedown order, describing it as “heavy-handed” and an “embarrassment” to the university. “Ordering the organization not only to take down the harmless photo but also to issue a public apology was unnecessary” as it pushed OSA to the “center of the very public ridicule it sought to avoid,” John Ezekiel Hirro wrote.

This has been completely blown out of proportion by OSA. As Leo said, that photo was just one of many in an album for a light Valentine’s Day story on summer uniforms (Type B) of UST college students. “It’s humor, not humiliation.” 

Censorship issues and this uniform brouhaha smack of vestiges of control and conservatism, which have characterized UST’s culture for decades. 

Why college students need to be color-coded and segregated according to uniform styles to this day beats me – and that probably is one conversation the university’s college students can begin to hold and sustain and bring to fruitful action. 

UST should know that the times have not only radically changed, they have also already made top-down controls practically irrelevant especially to the youth. That The Flame was able to use the photo on its site up to this morning is one baby proof of that. Read its “thank you” note to OSA, too. Kudos, Flamers! – Rappler.com

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These words are from University of the Philippines Student Regent Sofia Jan Trinidad while she was at the Rappler newsroom last Saturday, February 17.

Her words rang again in my ears just two days later when news broke that the University of Santo Tomas school administration pressured its students’ digital media organization TomasinoWeb to take down a photo it had posted on social media.

Innocuous perhaps to most, this photo merely showed students of UST’s College of Information and Computing Sciences standing in front of a 7-Eleven store. Intentionally or not, the photo does make one notice how the students’ uniforms mirror the colors of the convenience store brand. According to UST, this brought “public ridicule” upon the institution, warranting a takedown of the photo.

Leo Laparan II, a journalist who serves as TomasinoWeb’s publications adviser, resigned in protest, calling the school authority’s act a “clear illustration of censorship.”

Now according to UST’s rules, because TomasinoWeb has lost its publications adviser, it cannot be allowed to make any new social media posts until Laparan is replaced. Apparently, because TomasinoWeb is not “officially” a student publication under UST rules, it needs an adviser to keep posting on social media. Never mind that the Campus Journalism Act of 1991 states that student publications in universities aren’t required to have such an adviser. The law defines student publications as, “The issue of any printed material that is independently published by, and which meets the needs and interests of, the studentry.” Its Section 4 also carries this definition: “A student publication is published by the student body through an editorial board and publication staff composed of students selected by fair and competitive examinations.”

Let’s go back to Sofia.

She was one of the speakers at our “By the Youth, For the Youth” event organized by our civic engagement arm, MovePH. Around 100 student leaders, campus journalists, and youth organization members showed up at our newsroom to talk about how they can make a difference in public issues they care about, within and beyond campus.

Sofia, one of the UP student leaders who mobilized during the Christmas holiday season to provide shelter to Palestinian refugees, said the UP student council often faces pressures from their school administration too.

“Hindi kami nag-a-adjust. We assert our space in the university and this should also be a practice sa atin na ina-assert natin ‘yung sarili natin sa society, kung saan tayo nakatira,” she said during the panel discussion.

(We don’t adjust. We assert our space in the university and this should also be a practice among us, that we assert ourselves in society, or wherever we live.)

Academic freedom and press freedom were among the challenges the students identified during the workshop part of the event.

Another participant, Heather Andres from the Development Society of Ateneo, said, “We (students) are the biggest stakeholders of our university so we really have to push and really call for the things that really concern us and that affect us.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Schools are supposed to be bastions of independent and critical thinking. We cannot learn if we cannot think for ourselves. Knowledge cannot grow if every human just accepts unsatisfactory explanations and dogma handed down from above.

While the taking down of a photo may seem like a small thing, tiny pebbles make an avalanche. The more we accept that this is just the way things are, the more likely we will find ourselves forgiving bigger transgressions.

When we teach young people that they cannot say this or that because we prioritize an institution’s “image,” are we not teaching them to belittle their own freedoms? Will this not, in turn, teach them to belittle other people’s freedoms?

I also think that for many people, UST’s reputation suffered much more from the photo takedown than from the photo itself.

Like what was shared at our student empowerment gathering last Saturday, what happens in campuses doesn’t just stay in campuses. The actions of young Filipinos affect the nation. Just look at the 2022 elections, when 6 out of 10 registered voters were aged 18 to 41 – Gen Z and millennials.

The TomasinoWeb photo takedown has consequences far beyond UST’s beautiful campus. It’s already renewing calls to revisit the Campus Journalism Act (which I was chagrined to find is almost as old as I am!). It’s gotten working journalists talking about press freedom.

Truly, youth issues are the nation’s issues. Campus press freedom is press freedom. #DefendPressFreedom – Rappler.com

On Friday, February 16, the government formally announced that the San Miguel-led consortium, which outbid other big shots, has won the lucrative contract to rehabilitate the airport that’s caused us shame and pain, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). 

Remember New Year’s Day of 2023 when air traffic froze at NAIA? The “technical issues” caused the cancellation, rerouting, and delay of the flights of at least 65,000 passengers. It would be Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista’s worst nightmare, a crisis that pushed him and everyone concerned to move ahead with the ambitious P170.6-billion project to privatize and rehabilitate the country’s flagship airport.

According to Rappler business reporter Lance Spencer Yu, Bautista’s timeline was shorter than previous attempts to let the private sector take over. He could not afford to prolong the agony. Barely three months after the New Year fiasco, on Labor Day, lights went off at NAIA, causing misery to nearly 10,000 stranded passengers. And then a month later, just as privatization talks ramped up, another power outage hit NAIA Terminal 3.

The first half of 2023 thus saw Bautista’s department getting grilled by lawmakers from the Senate and the House about the airport catastrophes. Senators even went to NAIA themselves and discovered – surprise! – that air traffic equipment have not had proper maintenance. Read the highlights of the probes here.

Rappler Thought Leader Val A. Villanueva took the previous Duterte government to task for underspending on NAIA. He wrote: “Why NAIA was left to rot by the previous airport administration is beyond me. The airport is practically in need of a life-support system.”

So what does the new deal with the San Miguel-led consortium, which includes South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corporation, entail? 

• The group will make an upfront payment of P30 billion (about $536 million) to the government. 
• It will now be operating NAIA for a period of 15 years, which it is required to “rehabilitate, operate, optimize, and maintain.” For this period, it will pay the government an annual fixed cost of P2 billion (about $3.5 million). The deal includes a possible 10-year extension of the contract. 
• The obligation includes improvements in NAIA’s four terminals, its runways, and other facilities.
• The consortium will be sharing 82.16% (the highest offer among the bidders) of its revenue with the government. 

What to expect after this? Here’s a general breakdown. And here’s what the rehab project will cover.

Too good to be true? Well, probably not when the Philippines’ richest is supporting the project. Val said in this piece that BDO chairperson Teresita Tan Sy-Coson has committed to “bankroll the cost” of rehabilitating NAIA.

Still, it’s a long road ahead.

Experts said the country’s airport population calls for a “two-airport strategy.” Not that this is far-fetched. San Miguel already has its planned Bulacan airport complex (yes, the same company that bagged the NAIA contract). South of Manila, in Cavite, the local government has awarded the contract to develop Sangley Point into an international airport to a consortium that includes the Yuchengcos, the Tans, and the Viratas.

And it’s not all air. The transportation department is gung-ho on two other infrastructure projects in Mindanao. 

• No China? No problem. Secretary Bautista said his department will push through with the Mindanao Railway Project, something that the previous Duterte administration boasted it would finish on the bank of China’s (failed) promise to finance it.
• Davao’s EDSA. Estimated to cost P74.3 billion ($13 million), the Davao Public Transport Modernization Project is touted as a “game-changing project” by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Not to burst your bubble, but expect a lot of noise and heat and trouble in these projects in the coming months. As Rappler business reporter Ralf Rivas wrote in 2020, when the Duterte government announced it intended to recover from the pandemic by building roads and bridges: “Infrastructure projects spark economic activity. They also tend to attract thieves.” – Rappler.com

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Wednesdays are when the managers of Rappler get together for our weekly hours-long meeting to update each other, do quick assessments and fire-fighting as needed, and spot early on potentially hot issues before they get out of control. When CEO Maria Ressa is out of the country, she still joins the meetings remotely, unless time zones and her social obligations make it impossible.

Wednesday mornings usually leave Rappler managers frazzled and distracted, if not preoccupied with administrative tasks. After all, running a newsroom means looking beyond stories and content, and making sure there exists an enabling environment that allows journalism to thrive.

In our last meeting, for example, we discussed possible adjustments in our internship program that’s offered to students to make it mutually beneficial – a worthwhile learning experience for Rappler interns and a mentoring opportunity for us that has its own rewards. Given the state of journalism in almost any part of the world, one way of making sure journalism itself survives is seeing to it that journalists today have a successor generation that will guarantee newsrooms remain vibrant and populated with reporters and editors who will keep the fire burning, safeguard truth, and protect democratic freedoms.

DUTERTE GAMES. In the Philippine context, this acquires even greater significance post-Duterte. Some would argue that we’re not even quite there yet because the possibility of a Duterte resurgence remains very real. We’ve been sufficiently exposed to Duterte mind games from both father and daughter, but somehow a huge segment of the population remains captive to, if not enamored by, the Duterte brand.

Palace reporter Dwight de Leon aptly calls this guessing game a charade in his story, “2025 in the air: Revisiting the guessing game the Dutertes put up every election cycle.” Be sure to read it if you haven’t yet, and see how the flip-flops happened over time. It is political maneuvering, testing the waters, an attempt to outsmart the enemy, or a combo of all three – who knows? What’s painful is watching so many still falling for this kind of recurring political antics. I’d be interested to hear your own take about these trial balloons being released a year before elections.

A related story was co-written by senior editor Mia Gonzalez and Senate/education reporter Bonz Magsambol: “As Marcos-Duterte clans clash, should Sara resign from the Cabinet?” If ever Sara does, she would lose access to the huge resources of the Department of Education (DepEd), whose teachers also play critical roles during elections. On the other hand, the Dutertes cannot afford to lose control of Davao, their bailiwick. In a sense, local is supreme to national – after all, it’s the local votes that keep nationally-elected politicians ensconced in power. If the Marcoses are entrenched up in the North, it would be foolhardy for the Dutertes to lose their grip in the South.

MUST READ: 

• ICC case exposes Duterte’s desperation, Marcos’ indecisiveness
• Ex-Davao hitman Arturo Lascañas resurfaces as Uniteam sinks

PHILIPPINE EDUCATION. Speaking of DepEd, Bonz Magsambol reminds us in this story, “Why Filipino students performed poorly in global learning assessments,” that after close to two years, Sara Duterte has yet to introduce meaningful reforms in her own jurisdiction: education. In the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment, the Philippines ranked close to the bottom (77th out of 81 countries) in global listings. Our 15-year-old students demonstrated “the lowest proficiency…in reading, mathematics, and science,” Bonz wrote. How tragic and worrisome is that?

What were some of the reasons for this? Teaching and learning methods, teacher quality, and inadequate resources.

In fairness to the Vice President and Education Secretary, she inherited problems from her father’s previous administration, which also had to deal with a debilitating pandemic that left many ill-equipped schools and teachers flat-footed. Inadequate resources adversely affected agility, but for sure, Sara’s inexperience in the field of education (being a mother is clearly not enough) exacerbated the situation. Can she help Filipino students bounce back and drastically rise from the bottom of rankings?

POLITICAL PRISONERS. After reminders about mortality and love this week, we ought not to forget, too, prisoners put behind bars for political reasons. Data obtained by Rappler’s Lian Buan from rights group Karapatan and support organization Kapatid show that there are 801 political prisoners in the country, 672 of them still awaiting judgment. On average, they wait for four years to be judged, but there are 27 who have been incarcerated for more than a decade already.

Under Duterte, many were red-tagged or accused of being communists (not a crime here in the Philippines because the Communist Party is not outlawed). They have languished in prison, their trial taking longer – in violation of the Supreme Court’s six-month-average continuous trial rule that took effect in 2017. Under the current Marcos administration, at least 90 have been arrested and put in jail.

According to Lian, if before activists were charged with subversion, now “most political prisoners are charged with common crimes, often illegal possession of firearms and explosives…”

Irene Khan, United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, had recommended during her recent visit here that Marcos abolish the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. She also urged him to prohibit red-tagging by government and punish transgressors. Not surprising, there was no prompt response there. Only silence.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to download the Rappler app on iOS or Google Play and choose to join one or several community chat rooms that are safe spaces to exchange thoughts and ideas about whatever interests you. 

Till Thursday after next! Help us continue doing our work well by supporting independent and quality journalism. – Rappler.com

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Amid the dragon dances, bountiful feasts, and stunning fireworks, what does it mean to be Filipino-Chinese? In this beautiful, aching piece by our business reporter Lance Spencer Yu, he interrogates himself, his family, his thoughts, and the muted corners of his heart, reflecting on how his yaya had been treated at home and conceding that while he’d come a “long way in unburdening myself of this prejudice,” the “past weighs on me.”

China being China, it greeted Taiwan with eight Chinese balloons that, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry, crossed the Taiwan Strait in the early hours of the lunar year – yet another form of psy-war by the Asian giant.

The week ahead is a period of reckoning for our neighbor Indonesia. They go to the polls on Wednesday, February 14, as collective memory fades. The once-dreaded military commander under the Suharto dictatorship has a 20-point lead in opinion surveys on presidential bets: the incumbent defense minister retired general Prabowo Subianto.

• Campaign teams held their final rallies on Saturday, February 10, ahead of what has been dubbed the world’s biggest single-day election for about 205 million registered voters. 
• In 2014, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, who had served as CNN’s Jakarta bureau chief, wrote about the “Remaking of Prabowo” when he ran against – but lost to – then-candidate Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Even then, Prabowo’s rise from his political grave already astounded many. “It’s a comeback story that shows tenacity and grit, bringing a former disgraced general within touching distance of the Indonesian presidency,” Ressa wrote.
• “It’s like Bongbong Marcos winning as president of the Philippines!” was how some Filipinos described Prabowo’s feared victory in 2014. Well.
• Today, with the aid of technology, demographics (majority of Indonesia voters belong to a generation that has no memory or appreciation of Indonesia’s will in ousting its corrupt dictator in 1998), and the outgoing president himself, Prabowo is now truly a heartbeat away from replacing Jokowi, whose two-year term is ending. Reuters said he is projected to secure more than 50% of the votes. 
• The use of generative AI in campaigns is all over Indonesia – and it is hoped that this serves as a cautionary tale for all. An AI-generated cartoon of a “cuddly” Prabowo is splashed on billboards across the country and has generated 19 billion views on TikTok, according to this story, “Generative AI faces major test as Indonesia holds largest election since boom.”
• Deepfakes and their impact on elections and societies, not just in Indonesia, have been identified by the World Economic Forum 2024 report as the most severe short-term risks facing the world today. Probably too late for Indonesian youth, but this piece spells out how the young can address and fight this threat.

In the Philippines and elsewhere, February 14 is when hearts adorn the malls, offices, streets, homes. But beware of love scams, Rappler’s crime and justice reporter warns us in this story. For the first time in years, Valentine’s Day also falls on the same day as Ash Wednesday for Catholic Philippines. So, should Filipinos dine or fast on this day? We asked them in an informal poll on social media: Love for God or love for jowa? Check out the results here.

An actual survey by the Social Weather Stations, however, shows that Filipinos these days prefer money over love. How about you? – Rappler.com

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There is something magical in public spaces that draws people together. On that Sunday, the people in that market, including my family, gathered in the same spot because of our shared love for good food and common need to restock our pantries.

Once upon a time, social media exuded that same enchantment and optimism. Finally, a shared space overcoming distance and time for citizens to talk about issues they care about. But profit-driven algorithms, abuses by bad actors, and lack of responsible regulation turned these social media platforms into toxic spaces. 

So we retreated to our closed messaging groups. They’re safe because we know the people there – our friends, family, bicycle club mates, fellow vintage furniture lovers, etcetera.

But they are also insular and limited in reach. They are our comfort zones and echo chambers.

I want to invite you to a hybrid space – the community chat rooms on our app, Rappler Communities.

For two weeks, I’ve been leading something we call community chats on the app. They are live, time-bound chat sessions about specific topics of public interest. Our first community chat was about the rich tradition of Traslacion on January 9. 

Our faith reporter Paterno Esmaquel II, along with our other staff who covered the hours-long religious event, went on the #faith chat room to give updates about the procession. Jayeel Cornelio, an Ateneo professor and sociologist of religion, chimed in with compelling insights about what it means to be a Nazareno devotee. 

We also recently had a community chat about the new Samsung smartphone, the first to prominently feature artificial intelligence, led by our technology editor Gelo Gonzales as he covered the launch in California. Two fellow tech lovers, Isa does Tech, a content creator, and Gadget Pilipinas’ Gian Viterbo joined the chat.

When p-pop group VXON performed in our newsroom, their fans, Vixeys, got on the #pop-culture chat room to send their questions that were then read out during the interview portion. Our resident p-pop expert Russell Ku sent behind-the-scenes photos of the VXON boys to the chat room, to the delight of the fans.

Not a p-pop fan but a p-pol geek? There were some interesting community chats in the #philippine-politics chat room too! Our political reporters and editors got a chat going about the appointment of Ralph Recto as Marcos’ new finance secretary while the President was holding a press conference about it. 

Last Monday, there was an interesting discussion about who the opposition should field for senator in the 2025 elections. You can still check out the names mentioned there by backreading the conversation.

It would take several newsletters to recount all of the community chats we’ve held so far. I invite you to download our app and see for yourself! There’s a chat room for different kinds of public interest issues – #climate-change, #liveable-cities, #overseas-filipinos, #health-and-wellness, #money, #sports, #factsfirstPH, #crime, #justice-and-human-rights. There will be a private invite-only chat room for Rappler+ members to update them on exclusive events and content. If this sounds interesting to you, here’s how you can get Rappler+ membership.

Must Read

Rappler launches Rappler Communities: Here’s what you need to know

We’ve invited several key opinion leaders, who we call Thought Leaders, to be part of these chat rooms to provide context, expertise, and insight to the conversations. They will soon be identifiable by a green shield icon, which Rappler journalists also have beside their names. 

What makes Rappler community chat rooms different from the group chats you’re already part of? 

• The content is not determined by profit-driven algorithms. Journalists are in charge. A newsbot is programmed to send articles relevant to the chat rooms but it does so based on topics that thematically fall under the chat room’s focus.
• Journalists are present in all the chat rooms. Your insights and takes matter to us and this is a way we can meaningfully and immediately engage with you.
• It’s open to the public. The app is free and can be downloaded by anyone. Chat rooms can be joined by anyone.
• Community guidelines banning hate speech, calls to violence and harm are enforced in all chat rooms. A bot has been programmed to automatically censor harmful messages. This can then be appealed to human moderators. 
• Anyone can start a conversation. And when you do, Rappler’s journalists and the chat room community are listening.

There are currently around 200 to 300 members in every chat room. We hope to grow this community with you. We have many more exciting plans for the chat rooms. Could some serve as hotlines to report abuse or government negligence? Could they be a space for crowdsourcing story ideas and getting instant feedback about our reportage? Could they be a place for people to assess candidates in the upcoming 2025 elections? Could they be where book lovers converge with literary critics and bookstore owners?

At Rappler, we dream big, but always with you, our readers, in mind. Dream with us, and let these dreams turn to action, and hopefully, change.

You can download the app on Google Play or App Store and join whichever chat room piques your interest.

What’s cooking?

Pet-lovers unite! If you’re curious about pet health teleconsultations and are weighing the pros and cons for your beloved furry friend, this is the Community Chat for you. Carlo Flordeliza of PetPal, a local pet healthcare provider, can answer your questions in this conversation moderated by our health reporter and fellow fur mom Kaycee Valmonte. The chat will take place in the #health-and-wellness chatroom.

– Rappler.com