Mythbusting a mythomaniac

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo   In the recent televised one-on-one between Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the late deposed dictator, and former senator Juan Ponce Enrile (so-called architect of Marcos’ martial law), the latter revised history (and his own 1986 confession) by saying there was no one jailed or killed during the Marcos dictatorship. Name me one, he challenged.   Enrile is a mythomaniac, a person with an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating. He revised history...

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Autumn of the autocrat, a simulacrum

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo   (Written for the 46th anniversary of the declaration of martial rule, with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez who wrote “The Autumn of the Patriarch.”)   On that stormy September night the rats began to find their way into the Presidential Fortress by the sea, entering through cracks and holes and by sunrise the city awoke to the odor of a rotting corpse that wafted to nearby...

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Plant, plant, plant

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo “Build, build, build” is the Duterte administration’s favorite apothegm, jingle, call to action, catchphrase, mantra, slogan, whatever. Pangsindak, to stun, to impress, to jerk. It conjures up images of a gleaming horizon with skyscrapers soaring to the skies, winding roads and bridges slicing through cities and the countryside — a scenario meant to send the message to the world that the Philippines has arrived. That, while the nation’s poor and not so poor are groaning under the weight...

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Rice by any name

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo   There is no rice shortage? Okay, a rice crisis then. No need for the government officials to do cartwheels, antics and maneuvers to deflect people’s attention from the rice mess. It is real and you know it.   I did a piece on the 1995 rice crisis when regular rice was P20 per kilo, too expensive for the poorest of the poor. Now it is from P50 to P80. “Marami ka pang bigas na kakainin” (You’re going to have to eat a lot of rice yet) is a Filipino saying that means one has...

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