ARTICLES

Newsfeature SR pushes new UP Charter

Outdated, irrelevant and unfit for the university. The century-old UP charter should be replaced.

�UP students should push for a pro-people, pro-student university Charter,� urged University of the Philippines (UP) Student Regent James Mark Terry Ridon in a forum last Jan. 24.

The three-hour discussion, which was held at the UP-College of Mass Communication Auditorium, tackled controversial provisions on the new charter for the premier state university.

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Feature

The Ecosystem of Corruption

The $329.4-million NBN-ZTE deal has created a political storm with President Arroyo at the center.

October last year when Jose de Venecia III, the son of former Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr., dropped the first bombshell when he implicated First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo in the botched deal. He testified that the First Gentleman has told him to back-off from the project.

De Venecia, head of the Amsterdam Holdings Inc. , also alleged that ex- Commission on Elections(COMELEC) chair Benjamin Abalos has bribed him $10-million dollars to withdraw his company's bid for the broadband network.

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Column

Diatribes gone online

Internet and blogs have immensely changed the media landscape in the country. Alecks Pabico, an online journalist said in a 2005 blogging conference sponsored by UP that: �Blogs may yet become the Filipinos� new tool for ventilating dissent and waging activism.� These online journals have also complemented or become an alternative to mainstream media.

With its phenomenal rise, many speculate that the Internet and blogs blogs will eventually supplant traditional media.

However, this is not the likely scenario here in our country. Instead of countering the phenomenal rise of the Internet, Filipino broadsheets and TV networks created their online versions instead.

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ARENA of IDEAS