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Continue reading →: The Gospel According to Panga: A ₱500-Billion Leap of FaithInside PEZA’s Math: How ₱297 Billion Becomes a ₱500-Billion Prophecy By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo | October 12, 2026 IF YOU squint hard enough at the number—₱500 billion—it starts to look less like an investment target and more like a religious proposition. An article of faith, delivered not from a…
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Continue reading →: ₱9 Billion in ‘Savings’? DILG’s Fire Truck Deal Smells Like SmokeOr: How to Use a Corruption Scandal as a Marketing Campaign for the Next Corruption Scandal By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — October 11, 2026 LET’S get something straight right away: I want to believe Jonvic Remulla. I really do. The man is out here filing graft charges against 49…
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Continue reading →: The Audacity of Blame: Marcos Tells Global Investors Corruption Is Colonialism’s Fault — Not His Administration’sThree centuries of Spanish rule, eighty years of independence, and one President still searching for someone else to blame By Louis “Barok” C. Biraogo | October 11, 2026 SINGAPORE — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. stood before the assembled captains of global capital at the Forbes Global CEO Conference last…
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Continue reading →: The SMART KIDS Act: Because Nothing Protects Children Like a Law That Violates the ConstitutionSenate Bill No. 2424, or How the Philippine Senate Decided That the Best Way to Protect Kids Online Was to Do the One Thing the Supreme Court Has Repeatedly Said You Cannot Do By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — October 10, 2026 THE Philippine Senate has done it again. In…
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Continue reading →: The 5.3 Percent Illusion: How Manila Celebrated a Jobs Crisis While the Factory Gates ClosedWhen 310,000 Jobs Disappear but the Press Release Says “Recovery By Louis ‘Barok’ C. Biraogo — October 10, 2026 MGA ka-kweba, countrymen, and fellow prisoners of the Philippine statistical imagination—welcome back to the Cave. Let us begin with a confession. When I first saw the headline “Unemployment Falls to 5.3%,”…
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Continue reading →: From Graft Prosecutor to Graft Respondent: The Palpal-latoc France ScandalOr: How a Former Graft Prosecutor Allegedly Forgot Everything He Knew About Graft By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — October 11, 2026 ALLOW me to disappoint the CHR’s fan club: I have no love for the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). In my more generous moments, I call it a…
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Continue reading →: The Queen of Postponements: Sara Duterte’s Arraignment and the Fine Art of Buying TimeSorority Sisters, Pending TROs, and a Judge Who Just Needs More Time to “Study All These Things” By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo | October 10, 2026 SPOILER alert: Sara Duterte is not the first politician to discover that procedural rules are a wonderful thing. The Vice President was supposed to…
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Continue reading →: 10,000 Solar Pumps, Zero Water: The Marcos Irrigation ScamFour pumps a day, zero audits a year: Inside NIA’s procurement speedrun By Louis ‘Barok’ C. Biraogo — October 10, 2026 THE Marcos administration wants you to believe that 10,000 solar-powered irrigation sites by 2030 will solve Philippine agriculture’s problems. They’ve deployed Acting Executive Secretary Ralph Recto to sell this…
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Continue reading →: The Villar Crossover: A Masterclass in How to Make a Trillion Pesos Disappear (And Still Get a Committee Chairmanship)Seventy-Two Minutes, Three Corporate Disclosures, and One Conveniently Timed Senate Defection: The Villar Family’s Playbook for Surviving Scrutiny By Louis ‘Barok’ C. Biraogo — October 10, 2026 CALL me old-fashioned, but I was raised to believe that if you’re going to sell your soul, you should at least have the…
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Continue reading →: Pork, by Any Other Name: A Legal Autopsy of Suansing’s “No Pork” DefenseHow a ₱405-Million Supreme Court Case Became the Alibi for a ₱58.53-Billion Fund By Louis ‘Barok’ C. Biraogo — October 9, 2026 WELCOME back to the cave, where we do the dirty work of reading Supreme Court decisions so you don’t have to—and where we occasionally find that the people…
