"Je suis Ebangelista'

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo At a press conference last Sunday, reporters asked former Iglesia ni Cristo minister and newly released alleged abductee Lowell Menorca if he was Antonio Ebangelista, the tell-all blogger who exposes corrupt activities inside the 101-year-old homegrown church. Menorca did not answer yes or no. He suggested that he could be one of many Ebangelistas trying to bring out the truth and protesting...

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Wars over water

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo “Nations will rise against nations, kingdom against kingdom…” This apocalyptic biblical warning is often used to depict portents of things to come that sometimes do come true. Wars are waged over ethnic and religious differences as well as territorial issues that include resources yielded by the earth—fossil fuel, natural and living resources from the oceans and the wilderness, etc. Hardly...

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Joker Arroyo unedited: On Marcos debts, in defense of 'trapos'

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/ by: Ma. Ceres Doyo (The following is excerpted from an interview, “Joker Arroyo Looks Back,” that was published in the Feb. 24, 1991, issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.) It was a long chase that extended even to the turn of the year. The man simply refused to talk. He would give his famous shrug—and laugh. Then he softened a little. “Give me time,” he said, sounding neither weary nor impatient. And one...

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Magnet for wackos

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo Clowns, charlatans, megalomaniacs, merry Andrews, sociopaths and wackos of every color and stripe have been trooping to the Commission on Elections to file certificates of candidacy (COCs) since Monday. The COCs that these hopefuls filed were mostly for the presidency of what could be a woebegone, benighted republic during their reign. I am not referring to the party-affiliated and independent...

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Air strike on Medecins Sans Frontieres

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo Heartbreaking was the news about the air strike on the Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders hospital that killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients (including three children) and injured 37 (including 19 members of the MSF team). This happened on Oct. 3 in Kunduz in northeastern Afghanistan. The air strike came from the coalition forces (the United States among them) fighting...

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Joker Arroyo: He was my human rights lawyer

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo I AM STILL a bit shaky after learning from Inquirer editor in chief Letty J. Magsanoc that Joker Arroyo has “passed on to the highest court in the great beyond,” but I am under orders “to write a personal tribute,” so I write. When an Army general of the Marcos dictatorship slapped me with a P10-million libel suit in 1983 for my Panorama magazine article on human rights violations committed...

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Pope Francis on Merton: 'Man of dialogue'

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo When Pope Francis was choosing four Americans to cite in his speech to the US Congress assembly in New York, he had plenty to pick from. That he decided to pick Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and more so Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton says a lot about him. Lincoln and King stand big in American history; even schoolchildren know who they are. But Day and Merton are perhaps familiar...

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