DAVAO CITY — As many as 444 barangays (villages) in the Southern Mindanao region have been classified as among so-called “areas of immediate concern” this election season.
The police in the region reported 38 percent of the villages in Southern Mindanao, including those in three cities and 44 municipalities, are affected by armed and election-related threats.
MANILA – When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attends the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) slated this weekend in China?s southernmost island province of Hainan, she will be in elite company.
More than 200 senior government officials and 600 top businessmen from around the world, including the wealthiest of them all, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, are among those who have confirmed their attendance to the April 20-22 forum which this year will look for new approaches and ideas for sustainable economic development in Asia.
MANILA — Describing the successive attacks this week on provincial media practitioners as “despicable,” President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered the local law enforcement agencies to “carry out a swift and thorough investigation.”
In a statement, Press Secretary and concurrent Presidential Spokesperson Ignacio R. Bunye said attacks on journalists have “no place in a democracy that upholds press freedom.”
The Arroyo administration consistently asserts that voting for its candidates will mean an improvement in the economy. But will this election really put an end to poverty?
MANILA — Kalikasan-Peoples Network for the Environment today condemned the assassination attempt against Philippine Daily Inquirer Southern Luzon correspondent Delfin Mallari, Jr., saying that the Arroyo administration was doing nothing to prevent human rights violations against journalists and environmental activists.