Author: Clift Daluz

It’s almost comical – if it weren’t so tragic – that in 2025, the solution to Metro Manila’s perennial flooding is being pitched not by our Department of Public Works, not by the MMDA, and not by the President himself, but by a tycoon who happens to run a brewery, tollways, and an energy empire. After being called out for allegedly worsening floods, San Miguel Corporation’s Ramon Ang didn’t lash out. He didn’t hide behind lawyers. He did something both admirable and damning: He volunteered to fix Metro Manila’s floods for free. Free drainage construction. Free clearing operations. Free relocation…

As they say, history repeats itself. Metro Manila has a long, painful history of floods – destructive, disruptive, and always predictable. During the 1970s, when my family was living in San Juan, I remember how our house would go under water like clockwork during the rainy season. My Nanay would get a ruler and measure the flood level, as if she were tracking the height of disappointment year after year. She wasn’t alone. Mothers, and fathers I guess, all over the neighborhood were probably doing the same thing, measuring not just flood levels but government failure, inch by inch. Back…

There’s no clean way to be a whistleblower. You don’t walk into a Senate hearing with the truth and walk out a hero. You walk in with a target on your back. Julie Patidongan,  or “Totoy” to those following the missing sabungeros case, is the latest in a long, grim line of whistleblowers who’ve come forward not because they wanted to, but because something bigger forced them to. In his case, fear for his family outweighed fear of the man he once regarded as a god: Atong Ang. Predictably, as soon as he spoke, the mud came flying. Criminal past.…

The headlines these days are a parade of horror, spectacle, and sideshow: An impeachment complaint hounds Sara Duterte, while the Senate drags its feet. A new witness emerges in the long-cold case of the missing sabungeros. Allegations of mass murder, a business tycoon and a controversial actress named as masterminds, and bodies allegedly dumped in the depths of Taal Lake. Is this how our national conscience is being managed? One crisis to eclipse another? Let’s start where the circus began: The impeachment. Filed with theatrical timing and unmistakable political weight, the impeachment complaint against Sara Duterte didn’t come out of…

Over beers last weekend, two of my friends suddenly asked me: “Yung sinulat mo ba about China, totoo ba ’yun? Safe ba talaga sa China lalo na kung gabi?” I didn’t even flinch. I told them flat-out: Yes. I understand where my friends are coming from. When people hear “China” and “night,” they expect some kind of danger. However, it’s not the kind they imagine. As mentioned in my previous articles, I recently joined a group led by former Senator Nikki Coseteng on a trip to China. We visited Chengdu and a few other cities, but what truly burned itself…

In schools and offices, they teach us to duck, cover, and hold during earthquakes. In politics, we’ve learned to do the same when Sara Duterte takes the stage, because when she moves, the lies shake harder than the ground beneath us. Sara is always in the headlines, not for leadership, not for solutions, but for antics, drama, and lies. One week she’s gallivanting in Australia preaching about “Duterte-style governance,” the next she’s stonewalling Congress, skipping hearings, or playing victim on TikTok. Whether it’s staging photo ops with OFWs abroad or crying “political harassment” every time someone dares ask about her…

There was a time when news came from the top down. TV decided what mattered. Radio gave us our marching orders. Print framed the issues. And we swallowed it whole. True or twisted, the message was clean, controlled, and unquestioned. During the impeachment of former President Joseph Estrada in 2001, it wasn’t Facebook or Twitter (X) that carried the people’s fury, it was text. Yes, SMS. Those simple 160-character messages lit a fire across the country. “Resign!” “Punta tayo sa EDSA!” The streets filled. EDSA Dos happened. That was people power, old-school but raw and real. Then came the impeachment…

There was a time when the word kuryente echoed through newsrooms across the country. Veterans would warn the younger reporters: “Double-check your story at baka makuryente ka.” In the language of Philippine journalism, kuryente doesn’t refer to electricity, but to a false story – planted or otherwise – that a journalist falls for and publishes as fact. It’s a uniquely Filipino newsroom term that has destroyed careers, embarrassed news desks, and exposed the cracks in editorial judgment. When a reporter gets kuryente, it means they were duped. Worse, their editors let it pass. I first heard the word kuryente from…

I hate China. I hate that it has no pollution compared to the Philippines. I hate that traffic there moves, yes, actually moves, unlike the standstill we’ve come to normalize in Metro Manila and many other cities back home. I hate that their roads, even those in far-flung provinces, are governed by efficient, accurate, and well-maintained security systems. Road rage? Practically obsolete. Pickpockets and mugging incidents? I witnessed none. Public spitting? Not a single sighting. The hate stems from envy, if I’m being honest. The moment our plane landed in Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, the difference slapped me in the…

Let’s talk about the impeachment of VP Sara Duterte, and the political theater exploding in the Senate. Because behind all the noise, something else is moving. To understand what’s really going on, you need to know a bit about Sun Tzu. He was a Chinese military strategist from over 2,000 years ago, and his book The Art of War is still studied in war colleges, boardrooms, and, yes, backrooms of power. One of his most famous lessons? “All warfare is based on deception.” And in Philippine politics, that rule still holds true. What if everything we’re seeing – the delays,…