A view becoming widely accepted is that a country’s economic and social malaise can be attributed in no small measure to its dysfunctional institutions. This applies to our country’s two overarching institutions, Church and State, constitutionally separate but with interests and acts that often intersect. Deep reforms in both institutions bogged down by misgovernance are...

Japanese billionaire and pachinko king Kazuo Okada and American gambling tycoon Steve Wynn used to be close business associates and are now engaged in a bitter legal fight. President Aquino and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo used to be close political allies (maybe not so close) but are now the bitterest of enemies, engaged in even...

PNoy wants to reform the Judiciary. Renato Corona is the face of what is wrong with it. Therefore, he (Corona) must go. At least, that is the gist of the President’s recent pronouncements on the matter. As I wrote last week in this column, these pronouncements do not seem to match what is in his...

One of the nation’s contemporary leaders is Juan Ponce Enrile who publicly celebrated his 88th birthday on Valentine’s Day while presiding over the 17th day proceeding in the Senate impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona. His brilliance and his measured judgments have been on public display since day one of this historic event in...

Core Business World, 22 February 2012   In the 1950s, the Philippines was way ahead of its original ASEAN-5 counterparts — Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. The Philippines then had the second highest per capita GDP in Asia. Today, all its ASEAN-5 neighbors have surpassed the Philippines; Singapore has assumed first-world status. The latter has...

Few can put it better than William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar : “There is a tide in the affairs of men that taken at a flood leads on to fortune; omitted, all their journeys are mired in the shallows and in miseries.” I can’t help but think of the Philippine development experience in Shakespearean terms....

Core Business World, 21 February 2012 The likelihood of a real, meaningful reform of the tax system is fading fast. The fiscal space that the economic managers are talking about could easily be a fleeting one. It is built on compressed spending rather on stable, expanding resources. With serious past neglect in education, health and...

If President Aquino actually believes that his campaign against corruption will stand or fall on the conviction or acquittal of Chief Justice Renato Corona by the impeachment court, then one can only conclude that P-Noy’s campaign plan must have been half-baked from the start, and/or that he wasn’t really serious about it.

Crossroads (Toward Philippine economic and social progress) Philippine Star, 15 February 2012   Now that the Tourism authorities have adopted a tagline – “It’s more fun in the Philippines – as a means of getting foreign tourists to visit the country, one aspect of promotion needs to be discussed. To build positive expectations about the...

The government’s failure to spend about two-thirds of it public infrastructure budget last year has been partly to blame for the economy’s disappointing economic growth -- 3.7%, down from 7.6% in 2010. The final 2011 national government cash disbursement outcomes have yet to be released, but once released, they would demonstrate the slow pace of...