All Insight at The Manila Times

All Insight at The Manila Times All Insight is a weekly column at The Manila Times. It is published every Saturday, with an in-depth discussion of relevant and timely issues.

29/08/2026

Finally, a system that worked: The acquittal of alias "Ace"

ON AUG. 5, 2026, Branch 139 of the Regional Trial Court in Antipolo City granted a demurrer to evidence and acquitted the accused in Criminal Cases 26-91696 to 97, a prosecution for the sale and possession of dangerous drugs under Sections 5 and 11, Article II of Republic Act (RA) 9165.

Judge Marie Lynn Laborte-Andal’s 12-page order applies the four-link chain-of-custody framework required under Section 21 of RA 9165, as amended by RA 10640: 1) seizure and marking by the apprehending officer; 2) turnover to the investigating officer; 3) turnover to the forensic chemist; and 4) submission of the specimen to the court. The prosecution, the court found, failed to establish the first and fourth links beyond reasonable doubt.

Judge Laborte-Andal’s handling of this case merits commendation.

Read more in the link provided in the Comments Section below.

15/08/2026

DISASTERS EXPOSE CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT

Disasters from the past week expose the same issue: corruption in the government. In Calumpit, Bulacan — a town with dozens of flood-control projects worth over P2 billion — an entire village went underwater, and the local government was forced to declare a state of calamity, with more than 150,000 residents affected. Days earlier, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon stood on a stretch of EDSA that had just been repaved as part of the government’s P6-billion rehabilitation project, only to find it already cratered with potholes after a few days of rain. His reaction, caught on video and widely reported, was unfiltered fury. Two infrastructure failures, two supposedly “completed” projects, and two reminders that when disaster strikes, it doesn’t just flood streets or crack pavement — it exposes exactly where public money went, and where it didn’t.

Read this in full in the link shown in the Comments Section.

13/08/2026

PERVERSION OF JUSTICE.

The rich, the politically connected and the famous experience a version of Philippine justice that ordinary litigants never see: bail petitions expedited, technical motions entertained at length, media statements from their counsels emphasizing “trust in the system” the moment a favorable ruling drops. Meanwhile, an ordinary accused — a laborer, a small vendor, a rank-and-file employee — often sits in a congested jail for months awaiting arraignment, represented by an overworked public attorney, with no columnist to write on their behalf, and no media camera crew waiting outside the courtroom. The law on paper is the same for both. The law in practice is not.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/08/08/opinion/columns/perversion-of-justice/2401087

03/08/2026

CORRUPTION RETURNS TO DPWH

The challenge before the DPWH is no longer merely to clean up last year’s scandals. It is to ensure that future scandals never happen. That requires looking beyond flood control projects and examining every peso spent on public infrastructure with the same rigor. Corruption rarely announces where it will go next. Allegedly, it has returned to the DPWH.

The asphalt overlay projects now on bidding are the test of whether the DPWH learned that lesson, or whether it simply moved the racket from the riversides to the road surfaces.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/08/01/opinion/columns/corruption-returns-to-dpwh/2395994

26/07/2026

IN “2 Valid IDs,” an entry in this year’s 22nd Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival, actress Pokwang plays Sylvia, a poor farmer who cannot claim a relative’s remittance for her husband’s medical treatment because she does not have the two valid identification documents the money center demands of her. Desperate and running out of time, she turns to a fixer, and what follows is less a story about paperwork than about what a country does to its poorest citizens when it makes proof of identity a privilege rather than a right.

The film’s own promotional material makes the irony explicit — it is only in the Philippines that one is asked to produce two valid IDs just to get another one. That single line ought to embarrass every official who had a hand in the failed National ID system that was supposed to make Sylvia’s predicament a thing of the past.

Read more in this link -
https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/07/25/opinion/columns/two-valid-ids-and-a-national-id-that-failed-us/2391128

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