Amiel Roldan blog

---  “We Who Refuse the Grave”  That was the year   the dead were named by numbers—   a birthdate sealed in ash.   We did not mourn.   We rewrote the calendar   with hands unclaimed by blood.  Born again,   but not by womb or ritual—   we chose our own age.   Time bent for us,   not as mercy,   but as weapon.  The living asked:   must we follow the rites   of those already gone?   We answered:   no child, no grandchild,   no family to bind us.  We were young,   not by accident,   but by design.   No heirlooms,   no inheritance—   just breath and blade.  Desire for kin   was the first betrayal.   It made us dig graves   we never meant to fill.   So we refused   to raise the buried.  We did not want ...

THE MILITARY IN THE UNFOLDING DRAMA: A Nation on the Brink of Reckoning  In the Philippines' current socio-political landscape, the specter of institutional decay looms large. The nation finds itself entrenched in a precarious precipice—an intersection of endemic corruption, civic disillusionment, and the slow erosion of democratic norms. The essay "The Military in the Unfolding Drama" offers a compelling lens through which to examine this moment of reckoning, foregrounding the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and uniformed services not merely as passive observers, but as strategic actors in a volatile theater of governance. Their emerging role—marked by moral pronouncements, symbolic alignments, and tactical vigilance—signals a shift in the balance of power and a recalibration of national conscience.  This essay seeks to reflectively analyze the broader ills afflicting the Philippines, using the military's recent interventions as a premise to interrogate the fra...

Ghost Flood Control Projects in the Philippines: Anatomy of Corruption and Pathways to Reform   An Academic Essay in Actionable Parlay  ---  Introduction: The Specter Beneath the Waters  In a nation perennially battered by typhoons and monsoon rains, flood control infrastructure should be a lifeline. Yet in the Philippines, it has become a graveyard of ghost projects—phantom constructions that exist only on paper, siphoning billions from public coffers while leaving communities submerged in literal and figurative deluge. Between 2023 and 2025, the Department of Finance estimated that corruption in flood control projects cost the economy up to ₱118.5 billion, robbing Filipinos of over 200,000 potential jobs and stalling GDP growth. This essay interrogates the anatomy of these ghost projects, the systemic collusion that enables them, and proposes actionable reforms to dismantle the machinery of graft.  ---  The Political Economy of Kickbacks  At the...

Betrayal as Governance: A Critical Analysis of Bongbong Marcos Jr.'s Political Ethos  In Jose Alejandrino's polemical indictment “Bongbong's Record of Betrayals”, the former presidential consultant outlines a litany of perceived transgressions committed by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. against his father's legacy, political allies, national sovereignty, and the Filipino people. While the essay is framed as a direct critique of Bongbong's leadership, its deeper resonance lies in its articulation of betrayal as a mode of governance—a systemic failure to uphold ethical responsibility, historical accountability, and democratic integrity. This essay offers a congruent and abstract analysis of Alejandrino's claims, situating them within the broader discourse of postcolonial statecraft, elite capture, and the performativity of reform.  I. Betrayal as Postcolonial Inheritance  Alejandrino's opening salvo—that Bongbong betrayed his father by refusing to r...

Burning the Archive: Art, Accumulation, and the Spectacle of Corruption in Southeast Asia In the wake of recent revelations surrounding the Indonesian Prime Minister's private art holdings—many of which have been pillaged, torched, or quietly liquidated amid public outrage—we are confronted with a haunting image: contemporary art reduced to ash, not by accident, but by design. These were not mere decorative acquisitions. They were cultural assets amassed through state-backed investments, diverted public funds, and strategic co-optation of national collections. Their destruction, whether symbolic or literal, marks a violent rupture in the region's cultural memory—a spectacle of erasure masquerading as governance. This moment demands reflection beyond Indonesia. It invites us to speculate, with urgency and precision, on the Philippine condition: a nation where contemporary art is surging in global demand, even as government officials engage in frantic accumulation, laundering, an...