BECOMING A WRITER: THE SILENCES WE WRITE AGAINST

Many have said that our writing community is small because the Philippines is a small country to begin with. But our population is nearly twice the population of the United Kingdom and about a third of the population of the United States, which only shows that we aren’t a small country at all. I’m beginning to suspect that our own exclusionary tactics are to blame for making our writing community as small and incestuous as it is.

— Monica Macansantos

Why the rush on coco levy funds?

Rina Jimenez-David

Nobody seems to contest the fact that the billions of pesos in “coco levy funds,” collected during the martial law years ostensibly for the “development” of the coconut industry, truly belongs to coconut farmers.

But why is it that coconut farmers themselves, belonging to the Confederation of Coconut Farmers Organizations of the Philippines (CCFOP), are contesting two recent executive orders calling for the “inventory and privatization” and the “reconveyance and utilization” of these same funds?

Read on…