LuisTeodoro.com

Eighty-three percent of all Filipinos may be Catholics, but that doesn’t mean they vote according to the dictates of Church doctrine, or even on the basis of the candidate’s Church affiliation. This much can be concluded from the results of the more recent Philippine elections for President.
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THE drop in President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s approval rating from 51 percent last August to 41 percent this month—her lowest since she assumed the Presidency in 2001—will not necessarily mean that she won’t run in 2004. That much is evident from the statements from Malacanang as well as Mrs. Arroyo’s allies in the House of Representatives.
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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s claim that the coming visit of George W. Bush to this country would generate more jobs would have been hilarious. Except that the gains she claims the country will get from the visit are being used to justify the suppression of such rights as free assembly.
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Crime has become one of the most pressing concerns of Filipinos, as every survey on any issue that has to do with governance and the country’s problems has found. It is a concern that cuts across social classes. It is not limited to, or may not even be specially concerned with, worries over terrorist attacks like the bombings the country has experienced since 2000.
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I don’t know know if he has taken a survey on the subject—or even if he was quoted accurately, the media in these parts being prone to putting words in their sources’ mouths—but Senator Joker Arroyo is supposed to have said that “the public is crying for blood” in the “Jose Pidal” expose.
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Two years after the September 11 attacks on the United States he is alleged to have masterminded, Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, is apparently still alive—and from all appearances, reasonably well.

Bin Laden has appeared in another video-tape, most probably authentic, which shows him with another leader of Al Qaeda, Aymanal Zawahiri, unhurriedly walking down mountain trails—probably in an area along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Something is terribly wrong in the Philippine media. Something has been terribly wrong in the media despite the “restoration of democracy” in 1986. But 2003 is turning into their worst year in the nearly two decades since.
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