UPDATE 8: Now that the election canvass in Abra is almost over, we’d like to thank you for visiting this blog. We hope that you will continue to visit us in the future. Meanwhile, you might want to join us in our playful attempt to put words in the mouths of our Cordillera politicians here. In case you are interested in more election-related news from our region, we have some links for you here. Lastly, you might want to read our post in honor of our kailiyans who died working for a peaceful election here.
In one of our blog roundups, we linked to a new news blog, the Northern Philippine Times where you can find stories about the Cordilleras and the northern part of the country. A good friend, Gina Dizon, also writes stories and a column for said paper/blog. She also promised to contribute to our blog and this is her first contribution, a piece on Mt. Province congressional candidate Jupiter Dominguez.
Please note that this is not a blog endorsement for Mayor Dominguez. Gina, I think, likes him as a candidate and as a prospective Congressman. I, on the other hand, can’t get over the fact that he belongs to a political family that has controlled the province for about 30 years. And although he has proven himself to be a very capable mayor, I believe that much of the problems in our country can be traced to the fact that political power is in the hands of only a very few families. The more that political power is spread to more people, and not concentrated to a few political dynasties, the better off we will be as a nation.
Every now and then, we upload comments from the comments section to the main page not because we agree with them but because of the important points raised by the commenter and it would be a shame if said points are not read by more readers. This comment, written on the entry, “Who’s the Richest of Them All?”, is one such comment which deserves a front page treatment.
Please note though that I sometimes edit the comments in order to a) protect my ass from libel suits and b) for brevity, coherence, etc. etc. However, the original comments in the comments section will remain unedited. Continue reading A Reader Comments on "Who’s the Richest of Them All?"→
We are uploading this videos not because we are supporting Peter Rey Bautista’s candidacy for mayor of Baguio but because they have a historical value, i.e., the first attempt by a candidate from the Cordilleras to campaign via the internet. If you know of campaign videos by other Cordi politicians that we should upload and critique here, then do feel free to tell us about it.
Mission Impossible
I like this video because it plays up the candidate’s “youthhood” and portrays him as an action-oriented executive. Kind of fun and well done. Curfew
After watching this video I said, “Peter, Peter, what are you doing making a campaign issue out of curfew? Hindi kaya ikaw ang ma-curfew niyan.” Don’t get me wrong. Maybe youth delinquency is a problem in Baguio but the video would have been more effective if Peter Rey doesn’t look so young. Honestly, parang kamukha niya yong aking grade school pamangkin with that playful smile, semikalbo haircut, and all. So its kind of hard to take the curfew message seriously because I was like, “Uh uh, look at that kid campaigning on curfew for kids.”
Our favorite Catholic bishop and kailiyan Bishop Francisco Claver has an interesting article on vote buying and selling which every Filipino voter should read before they go to the polls on May 14. Our good bishop gets a little bit snarky in this article which is why we are “stealing” it from the Inquirer. Way to go bishop.
Buy and sell By Bishop Francisco F. Claver, S.J. When our village philosopher, a wizened Bontoc Igorot of uncertain age, heard a few weeks ago that the government was going to shell out P40 per day to hungry people (according to a report in one of the papers), he remarked: “Is that the new way of buying votes?”
