INTRODUCED by the “kapihan” host as ” the deputy national security adviser designate,” Rommel Banlaoi said in the forum that the National Security Council will stop the practice of exposing certain organizations as communist fronts. The Reds cleverly call it “red-tagging” to make it seem wrong. The term however only means exposing Red fronts as such. What’s wrong with that?

That’s nuts. It is because of communist fronts that the communist insurgency has grown since 1968, and continues as a threat to our democracy. Without these fronts, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) could not have recruited tens of thousands of our idealistic youth to their ranks, to die for a failed God.

ONE forever-Yellow opinion writer was delighted that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. seemed to dispute the Philippine Statistics Authority’s report of a 6.1 percent June inflation when he said he “had to disagree with that number, we are not that high.” That writer even maliciously claimed that Marcos will arm-twist that PSA to change its numbers, or transfer its officials to some other post. His column’s title: “PSA to tweak 6.1% inflation for BBM?”

Obviously, that writer’s decades of writing had not changed at all his proclivity of commenting on something he really knows little about. To be fair though, I had been mainly an economic and business writer for most of my journalism career, and I know for a fact that even most reporters in this specialized beat are confused about this economic measure called “inflation.”

Okay, almost all know that inflation is the increase in prices of a chosen group (“basket”) of commodities and is measured as the percentage increase from one earlier period to a later one. For easier computation, a particular year is chosen as the “base” year with prices valued at 100 points. The PSA changed its base year from 2012 to 2018 as its base year in 2020.

INDEED, Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr.’s (PFRM) May victory was nearly a walk in the park, and as early as December last year, I wrote a column that the election in 2022 was likely to be the “first-ever boring election for two of the highest posts of the land.”

Backed up by data from surveys, I concluded that Bongbong would be getting the huge votes from Filipinos satisfied with the performance of President Duterte, as he was, even if unannounced, his political heir.

SIX years after it started investigating charges against Rappler for violating the constitutional provision banning foreign ownership in media, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last June 28 finally ruled Rappler incontestably guilty of the charges and ordered it closed. The decision was unanimous among the five SEC commissioners, who were either career people or had impeccable qualifications as attorneys and CPAS.

We are indeed moving toward building a Strong Republic, with a regulatory body demonstrating independence from powerful private entities, ignoring the shrieks of a grossly uninformed Western media alleging the press is being suppressed by a dictator in the country.

It declared Rappler as well as the holding company its investors used to evade the Constitution, to be non-existent as a corporation, and therefore without any authority to operate as an entity. Its CEO and founder, Maria Ressa, an American more than a Filipino citizen, of course pooh-poohed the SEC decision, saying it is business as usual for Rappler.

MORE precisely its repair crew’s unbelievable incompetence, or negligence, did.

Here’s what happened. The other day, at about 6 p.m., right after a thunderstorm in our village, power conked out in our part of the area. It usually does as Meralco’s corporate philosophy is: don’t fix it if ain’t broke. Never mind if many of the transformers and fuses in the area are over 30 years old and get busted in a severe rain or rush of lightning.

The repair crew did arrive at around 7 p.m., and in fact I would have even written a column praising their efficient system for reporting outages and acting on these, which is even faster than those in the banks that I use.