ON.SONA 2025

29 July 2025


"The dark state of the nation cannot be covered with lies." 

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COCOY LAUREL'S GIFT TO NORA AUNOR

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Borrowed from Andra Exclusive 24 April 2025 Lifted from Celia Diaz Laurel  23 May 2023 Because YOU asked for it, we are giving you another snippet of “The Remarkable Miss Nora Aunor” penned by Celia Diaz Laurel for the Superstar's 18th birthday.  Lollipops and Roses was a certified blockbuster but her legion of fans would not have probably hinted that Nora was silently suffering from many things, mainly intrigues and social pressure during this film’s shoot in the US.  In her tribute, Mrs. Laurel disclosed about a particular day when Nora was not in her usual active self and had become the shoot's cause of delay due to her frequent disappearances from the set. Naturally, the delays had also began to make her two leading men, Cocoy and Don Johnson, fidgety too.  So with all good intentions, Mrs. Laurel silently followed her. She found her sobbing in a corner. Trying her best to comfort her, Mrs. Laurel gently placed her hand on Nora's head.  Though surprised, the...
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THE FALL

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Lifted from OPTIC POLITICS EDITORIAL | The Candle That Burned Out: The Collapse of Martin Romualdez’s Speakership OPTIC Politics | September 17, 2025 Power, in a democracy, is never permanent. It is borrowed, conditional, and answerable to the Constitution and the people. Yet Martin Romualdez believed otherwise. For three years, he built his speakership on the illusion of invincibility, mistaking political arithmetic for public trust. Today, that illusion has collapsed, and his resignation marks not just the fall of one man, but the implosion of an entire machinery of arrogance. Romualdez’s downfall was not sudden — it was the natural result of years of abuse. His speakership will be remembered as a textbook case of how not to lead a legislative chamber. Under his watch, budget insertions and flood-control scandals surfaced, billions in taxpayer money allegedly redirected and repackaged with suspicious precision. Congress, endowed by the Constitution with the power of the purse, wa...
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Nick Joaquin - Culture and History

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Lifted from Likhaan “Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.” ~Nick Joaquín, in “Culture and History" *** He might have preferred to keep his birthday a secret, but 106 years ago, a titan of the Philippine letters was born in Paco, Manila.  A genius of narrative be it in his works in fiction, journalism, poetry, and drama, Nicomedes “Nick” Joaquín, who also wrote under the nom de plume Quijano de Manila, is widely regarded as the most prolific Filipino writer in English – and even as he wrote in a borrowed tongue, his works are unmatched not only in his mastery of the language but above all, in their incisive exploration and interrogation of what makes a Filipino, especially with his signature baroque, Spanish-flavored English. Through celebrated works such as novel “The Woman Who Had Two Navels,” the short story “May Day Eve,” and the play “A Portrait of the ...
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