№ 824. State of the Nation in Pictures

Philippine STAR

 

 

№ 812. Railways to Our Future

Railways to Our Future

By: Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:06 AM April 14, 2026

Finally, we’re seeing both the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) publicly agree on a transport philosophy that upholds the primacy of commuters over cars. At least, that’s what DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon and DOTr Secretary Giovanni Lopez both declared on the same stage at the last general membership meeting of the Management Association of the Philippines. It would be a welcome departure from the car-centric approach that appears to have guided land transport planning and policy in our country over the past decades.

Car-centricity may not have been explicit in past government plans or policy documents, but was nonetheless evident in how public investments favored road construction and repair over the wide provision of public mass transport facilities, especially by rail. For instance, I’ve long considered it a mortal sin that our transport authorities deliberately missed connecting the Metro Manila mass rail transit system to the airport, even with the train depot of LRT-1 lying right beside the domestic air terminal. A transport official back then privately admitted to me the simple reason: the taxi industry strongly lobbied against the airport link. It amounted to favoring cars (as taxis) over mass transport. More disgusting was how it put the vested interests of a few (taxi operators) over the greater good of the many (the riding public), in a patently antipeople move.

Car-centricity also shaped the national vision embodied in Ambisyon Natin 2040, which included the average Filipino family’s aspiration to own a private vehicle—no doubt influenced by the prevailing context of a highly inadequate public transport system. This expressed aspiration might not have been so prominent had mass transport not been the punishing ordeal it has commonly been and continues to be. And as seen in most world capitals, central to convenient and extensive mass transport systems is rail transport, of which we have woefully little.

London today reportedly has 491 kilometers (km) of urban commuter rail lines, while New York has 399, Tokyo 337, and Seoul 327. Closer to home, our neighboring Asean capitals, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, and Jakarta have 205, 241, 280, and 396 km, respectively. In terms of population density, London has about 28,500 people per km of commuter rail line, New York has 21,300; Tokyo 41,500; Seoul 29,400; Kuala Lumpur 10,300, Singapore 25,700, Bangkok 40,700, and Jakarta 27,000. For Metro Manila, it’s a measly 52 km of rail lines from LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3 combined, for a density of 269,000 people per km. Even just aiming for 40,000 people per km, similar to Tokyo and Bangkok, Metro Manila should have at least 350 km of urban commuter rail lines, about 300 km more than what it has today. But if we aim for the more typical density of 30,000 people per km, we should really have 467 km, or nine times what we have today.

Japan, known to be among the top railway-capable countries worldwide, has long helped us develop our rail transport system, having in fact funded LRT-2 and the rehabilitation of MRT-3. It funds most of the ongoing 33-km, 17-station Metro Manila Subway Project (MMSP) from Valenzuela to Bicutan, branching to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3, thereby belatedly providing a railway link to the airport. Along with it is the 147-km, 36-station North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) to run from New Clark City to Calamba, Laguna, also partly funded by the Asian Development Bank. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) has extended 727.8 billion yen in loans (around P300 billion) for MMSP since it broke ground in early 2019, and is contributing 786 billion yen (around P340 billion) for NSCR. Both projects have suffered repeated delays due to persistent and exasperating right-of-way issues. Then came the legislators who infamously shifted budget allocations for foreign-assisted projects to unprogrammed appropriations to give way to their questionable pet projects, thereby impeding budget releases for and stalling these crucial projects further. While both MMSP and NSCR were earlier planned to be partially operational by 2022 and fully operational by 2027 to 2028, DOTr now aims for completion in 2032, with more in the pipeline.

Jica’s assistance toward our railway-enabled future included grant assistance to establish and operate the Philippine Railway Institute, a facility aimed to train over 15,000 personnel to support the coming new rail facilities. This complements Japan’s assistance on the hardware with assured “peopleware” to manage, operate, maintain, and sustain them.

If Dizon and Lopez will be true to their words, Filipino city dwellers can look forward to a future of more livable cities. But don’t hold your breath just yet. 

 

 

 

№ 796. Pasko 2025

 

№ 790. State of the Nation (SONA) 2025

 

SALN Lockdown

MANILA, Philippines — Hundreds of thousands gathered Sunday for the start of a three-day rally organized by a religious group in the Philippine capital to demand accountability over a flood-control corruption scandal that has implicated powerful members of Congress and top government officials.

As of 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, crowds came in droves. The Manila City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office estimated attendees to be at 650,000 by 6 p.m.

It’s the latest show of outrage over accusations of widespread corruption in flood-control projects in one of the world’s most typhoon-prone countries. Various groups have protested in recent months following the discovery that thousands of flood defense projects across the country were substandard, incomplete or simply did not exist. 

№ 789. Technical experts: Are they truly heard?

Technical experts: Are they truly heard?

By: Raymund Narag 

 

Brainly

 

№ 788. The Western Sea

 

 

 BATANES, Philippines - Marilyn Hubalde still remembers the first time she heard the thunderous chop of military helicopters swooping over this northernmost outpost of the Philippines, less than 90 miles from Taiwan. It was April 2023, when Filipino and American troops descended on the cluster of 10 emerald green islands of Batanes province for amphibious warfare drills. 

“We were terrified,” the 65-year-old Hubalde recalled. “We thought China might attack when they learned there were military exercises in Batanes.” Hubalde’s helper, who was in the fields when the troops arrived, panicked and hid in the woods until nightfall. “She thought the war had already started,” said Hubalde, who owns a variety store in the provincial capital, Basco. 

Since then, Batanes’ 20,000 residents have become accustomed to high-tempo war games in these islands of tightly packed towns and villages wedged between rugged slopes and stony beaches. Among them: a series of joint exercises from April to June this year in which U.S. forces twice airlifted anti-ship missile launchers here.

Until recently, locals say, this smallest and least populous province of the Philippines was a peaceful backwater. But geography dictates that it is now on the frontline of the great power competition between the United States and China for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. The islands sit on the southern edge of the Bashi Channel, a major shipping lane between the Philippines and Taiwan that connects the South China Sea with the Western Pacific. 

This year’s exercises revealed how the U.S. and its Philippine ally intend to use ground-based anti-ship missiles as part of efforts to deny the Chinese navy access to the Western Pacific by making this waterway impassable in a conflict, Reuters reporting shows. These missiles could also be used to attack a Chinese fleet attempting to invade Taiwan or mount a blockade against the democratically governed island.

 

The ability to conduct operations deep into the Pacific would be vital for the Chinese navy if it wanted to counter U.S. and Japanese attempts to intervene in a Taiwan crisis. Chinese naval and air forces would also need to operate in the Western Pacific to stymie any counter-measures by the U.S. and its allies if Beijing imposed a blockade on Taiwan.

 

“We should have the ability to deny the Chinese control of the Bashi Channel,” retired Rear Admiral Rommel Ong, a former vice-commander of the Philippine Navy, told Reuters in an interview. “In a conflict scenario, that decisive point will determine who wins or who loses.”

 

Retired General Emmanuel Bautista, a former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, put it even more plainly: “The invasion of Taiwan is almost impossible if you don’t control the northern Philippines.”

New York Times

China views Taiwan as its own territory, and President Xi Jinping has said that Beijing refuses to renounce the right to use force to gain control of the island. Taiwan's government rejects China's sovereignty claims, saying only the island's people can decide their future.

 

“The Taiwan issue is China's internal affair,” the foreign ministry in Beijing said in response to questions. “How to resolve it is solely China's own business and does not warrant interference from others.” The ministry also said it advised the Philippines “against using any pretext to draw in external forces” and not to provoke confrontation and create "tensions in the South China Sea.”

 

The Pentagon did not respond to questions. Taiwan’s defense ministry declined to comment for this story.

 

 

 

№ 786. Saving the House, Not Burning It Down

SAVING THE HOUSE, NOT BURNING IT DOWN: A Moral Call Amid a Political Crisis

Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David 

(Please spare ten minutes of your time to read this reflection.)

In the midst of the nation’s latest political turmoil—sparked, ironically, by the President’s own call to investigate corruption—we find ourselves at a moral crossroads. The crisis has revealed both the fragility and the resilience of our democratic institutions. It also confronts us with a question that transcends partisan divides: How do we purge the rot of corruption without destroying the house of democracy that generations of Filipinos have struggled to rebuild?

For decades, our cries of protest—ibagsak! and lansagin!—were formerly directed against oppressive regimes or unjust structures. But today, we raise those same cries in a different spirit. We say ibagsak at lansagin—calling for a dismantling, not of the government itself, but the corrupt networks that have captured and crippled it. We seek not the collapse of the state but its redemption.

As my brother, the sociologist Randy David, reminds us in his PDI Sunday column today (October 12, 2025), “The government of the day—the administration of President Marcos Jr. and Congress—is not the entire state. Its failures may expose flaws in the Constitution, but they do not necessarily undermine the viability of the constitutional state itself.” This distinction is crucial. It means that to criticize, investigate, and hold accountable is not to destroy but to strengthen. To reform is to renew. We do not need to burn the house down to get rid of the rats. It would be folly to throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

№ 796. Cost of Education

Macleans

Story by Bella Cariaso

The [Philippine] government spends at least P300,000 a year to educate a University of the Philippines student and P30,000 per year for a learner enrolled in public schools, Education Secretary Sonny Angara reminded graduates of UP Mindanao.

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№ 793. Corazon Aquino

BY PICO IYER
Jan. 5, 1987

History, wrote Gibbon, is little more than a "register of crimes, sorrows and misfortunes." It is, equally often, a study in black ironies or the fatal mechanisms of tragedy. Sometimes history is even a cautionary tale, an Aesopian fable on the folly of blindness or greed or lust. But history is rarely a fairy tale, a narrative that instructs as well as inspires. Still less often is it a morality play, in which the forces of corruption and redemption, of extravagance and modesty collide in perfect symmetry.

The Echo

№ 779. Hey stupid, what about the Philippine Economy!

Tribune

Bite Back

Politics as entertainment is precisely just that. Popcorn. Sleight of hand to trick our attention. What about our economy? The country now is glued to Tiktok, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram all of which generate and spread political memes, soundbites and daily doses of entertainment. What is happening to our PhilHealth, SSS, Maharlika Sovereign Fund, per capita GDP, inflation, ad infinitum?

"Bread and circuses" ("bread and games") panem et circenses. 

Meanwhile who is minding the economy? Where are we headed?

Next season, Midterm Elections. After that, Impeachment. Meanwhile quo vadis, Philippines?

New York Times

Why Do We Equate Kindness with Leadership?

Reuters

№ 744. Good News Monday

 

Medal Tally as of August 5, 2024

№ 731. Chinese in the Philippines & Southeast Asia

Geography Politics & Maps

№ 722. End Game: Retirement

Tanseco

But of course, retirement is only common in the middle class in the Philippines, where you’d need at least P5 million to live comfortably in retirement. Most Filipinos work until old age, but big family units make it easier to pull back from working in your later years.

Big 7 Travel ranked its Best Places to Retire list based on a number of factors, namely: quality of life, cost of living, rent index, restaurant price index, average annual temperatures, the easiness of obtaining a visa or residency, healthcare, hospitality, language barriers, and the range of things to do.

The Philippines, surprisingly, ranked higher than Luxembourg, Ireland, and New Zealand. Meanwhile, the best countries to retire in are Slovenia, Portugal, Estonia, Spain, and Paraguay. But you won’t have to fly halfway across the world for a cozy retirement community when you can find it right here in the Philippines.

№ 674. December 10, 1898

Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain

Article III.

        Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands, and comprehending the islands lying within the following line:

        A line running from west to east along or near the twentieth parallel of north latitude, and through the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi, from the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) to the one hundred and twenty-seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence along the one hundred and twenty seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45']) north latitude, thence along the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45') north latitude to its intersection with the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35') east of Greenwich, thence along the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35') east of Greenwich to the parallel of latitude seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40') north, thence along the parallel of latitude of seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40') north to its intersection with the one hundred and sixteenth (116th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence by a direct line to the intersection of the tenth (10th) degree parallel of north latitude with the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, and thence along the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the point of beginning.

        The United States will pay to Spain the sum of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty.
Article I

№ 660. Visita Iglesia 2022 Through Square Lenses

 

№ 629. Elections 2022

It is not difficult to find parallels in history and myth for Robredo’s crusade. The foremost image that comes to mind is that of an armor-clad Joan of Arc, riding off to battle against those who had turned their backs on France to support the English. There is a long, long list of women who took up the sword to fight for freedom and justice. In 1521, after her husband fell in combat, Maria Pacheco took charge of the defense of the Spanish city of Toledo in a popular uprising against the monarchy; later that century, Guaitipan or La Gaitana led Colombia’s indigenous people against the invading Spanish; the 17th century is replete with accounts of women going into battle dressed as a man, so they could join the armies. And of course we cannot forget our own La Generala, Gabriela Silang, who fought the Spanish after her husband Diego was assassinated in 1763.

Film Affinity

 

№ 585. 1521-2021

 

№ 515. Philippines 2050

The Philippines has an abundance of skilled and unskilled labor, some say oversupply. 

I really hope we can scale up and harness this human capital more to leapfrog our country into the top 20 economies of the world. China was able to do this in about 30 years, beginning in the 1980s. HSBC predicts that by 2050 we will become one of the world's top 30 economies. Now na. 

I cannot wait for 2050. 

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№ 413. Baler Through Square Lenses

№ 371. Natural History Museum Through Square Lenses