reposted over at Filipino Voices) A few days ago, ZTE-NBN whistleblower Joey de Venecia III spoke before a huge throng of gays and lesbians. Based on what my friend told me, Joey spoke of the attempts by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to discredit or disallow Ang Ladlad, a partylist organization espousing the rights of the [...]

Ang Ladlad, the national organization of Filipino homosexuals, is now an accredited partylist organization after the Supreme Court ordered the Commission on Elections to include it in the list of partylist organizations while its petition remains pending before the High Tribunal. If you remember, Ang Ladlad was disqualified by the Commission on Elections twice. The latest [...]

What do I think about homosexuals? Do they qualify as a sector? What do we mean by a sector, by the way? Justice Vitug, writing a dissenting opinion in Ang Bagong Bayani vs. Comelec, provided us with an answer. A sector, says Vitug, is a group of individuals sharing the same characteristics, interests or concerns. Of [...]

Comelec commissioner Nicodemus Ferrer, chair of the Comelec’s second division, is a member of Binmaley’s ageing population. The oldest among the present crop of election commissioners, Ferrer positions himself as a moral praetorian guard. Decide if Ferrer’s defense on rejecting Ang Ladlad’s petition for accreditation deserves our greatest praise: Ferrer argued the decision has sufficient legal [...]

Some sectors are questioning the “propriety” of the Comelec’s second division’s decision to junk Ang Ladlad’s partylist accreditation. The resolution, penned by no less than the division’s chief, Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer, was the second time the COMELEC junked the accreditation bid. On the first try, the COMELEC did, indeed, rendered a judicious one—Ang Ladlad’s constituency, [...]