Manila: Winners and losers have dominated events in the Philippines in 2010. The tug-of-war of news makers could give a hint on the strengths and weakness, including the opportunities and threats that loom large in the country's past and future.
Former Senator Benigno Aquino during the country's first automated elections last May.
His predecessor, former President Gloria Arroyo stepped down in June, who was also a winner in her bid for a seat at the House of Representatives in the May polls. She was the first president ever to run for a lower political post.
Much criticised due to rampant human rights violations and corruption during her term, Arroyo's economic reforms that Congress legislated pushed Philippine economy upward while developed countries went into recession in 2008.
The good economic indicators in Arroyo's term spilled to Aquino's first year. Thus, the Philippines is expected to have 6 to 8 percent growth (in gross development product or GDP) in 2011.
Former Makati City mayor Jejomar Binay was a surprise vice presidential winner. Aquino's team-mate former Senator Mar Roxas was a loser by less than a million votes. He filed an electoral protest, but Aquino will appoint him to a high post in 2011.
A real big loser was Binay's presidential running mate, former President Joseph Estrada. After winning in a landslide 1998, he was ousted in 2001 by a military-backed street protests who were against the abrupt ending of his impeachment trial at the senate in late 2000. He was arrested and imprisoned in 2001 for $ 78 million plunder, was convicted for life imprisonment in 2007, but was granted presidential pardon in the same year. All these things happened during Arroyo's term.
World-renowned boxing champion Manny Pacquiao became a victor three times: in a US-bout against Joshua Clottey in the welterweight division last March; in another US-bout against Antonio Margarito, also in the welterweight division in November; and in his bid for a seat at the House of Representatives in the May polls.
Pacquiao, who calls himself a "public servant," is now a representative of Saranggani in the southern Philippines. Unlike his relentless victories in boxing, he once lost a congressional bid to represent General Santos, his hometown in the south, in the 2007 elections.
Popular TV host Kris Aquino, a victor in her career and for getting votes for her brother in the presidency polls, became a loser when she and her husband James Yap split up in July. The court has yet to rule on the annulment of their three-year old marriage.
There were only five minor natural calamities in 2010: the acting up of Mayor Volcano in Bicol in January, and of Mount Bulusan also in Bicol in November; water crisis due to drought in March; gas leak in Makati City area, from a pipeline from Batangas, in southern Luzon, to Manila, in July; dengue cases erupted in August.
A man-made crisis occurred during a botched police rescue operation killed eight Hong Kong tourists during a hostage crisis that was launched by a disgruntled policeman on a tourist bus in Manila last August.
It has sourced Philippine-Hong Kong ties, resulting in travel advisories that have affected the country's tourism industry.
Mending ties would be costly such as payment for the families of the eight killed and 10 who were injured during the hostage crisis. This will be done in 2011. Hong Kong also wants to get 116 Filipinos witnesses to testify on how the victims were killed and injured in Manila.
A bomb blast during a bar examination injured 50 people, including one who lost a leg in September.
Human rights violations included the arrest of 43 health workers who were alleged as communists in February. They were ordered released in December, but 10 of them remained in prison.
The most heinous crime occurred with the massacre of 58 people, including 34 journalists due to political rivalry in Maguindanao in the south last November. Accused were members of a political Filipino-Muslim family and the hearing of the case began in Manila in early 2010.
Senator Ping Lacson, accused of involvement in the murder of a publicist in 2001, gave up his post, escaped and went into hiding prior to his arrest, in January. In contrast, Antonio Trillanes, a failed coup plotter against Arroyo in 2003 and in 2007, who became senator in 2007 was given temporary freedom last December. But he refused to admit guilt so that he could avail of Aquino's offer of amnesty.
Arroyo's press secretary Cerge Remonde died in January. A baby boy was found alive in the trash bin of a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain, which landed at Pasay City's Ninoy Aquino International Airport in September. A conscience-stricken mother surfaced and said she gave birth at the lavatory of the plane.
A winner of lotto's P 740 million jackpot in November was a Filipino resident in New York.
Last December, the Supreme Court acquitted Hubert Webb, son of Senator Freddie Webb, and seven others who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995, for the rape and murder of an 18 year old woman in her house in 1991. The girl's mother and sister also died in the incident, and the surviving father Lauro Vizconde filed a motion for reconsideration also in December.
The influential Catholic bishops have been engaged in war with government officials. They called for the resignation of Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral who distributed free condom on February 14; they were against the implementation of sex education in a debate that began in June; a Bishop revealed the alleged involvement of Aquino's government officials in illegal gambling, in September.
It is against the passage of a health bill that would allow government to subsidise all forms of family planning method for the poor.
