Welcome!

I’m Ellen Tordesillas, a journalist.

I will be posting in this blog my columns in Malaya, articles by VERA Files, as well as materials relevant to strengthening democracy and making life worth living.

Malaya is a daily (except Sunday) newspaper in English that has a courageous history in the Filipinos' fight against tyranny.

VERA Files is composed of veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues.

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Ellen
E-mail: ellentordesillas {at} gmail {dot} com

Tag: Muslim

The Cha-cha option

Published by Ellen on August 14, 2008

We all knew that Gloria Arroyo has no plans of giving up her stolen presidency but her temerity last Monday pushing for a shift to federal system of government, followed up by her press secretary, Jesus Dureza, left us flabbergasted.

A friend pointed out to us that Arroyo actually announced it last July 29 in her state- of -the -nation address but we were too busy with VAT and the 50 centavos text (which turned out to be a big lie).

Bentahan ng Mindanao

Published by Ellen on August 13, 2008

Natanggap ko itong text ni Atty. Adel Tamano:

“I have received death threats via text messages because of my stand on the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) on Ancestral Domain. Some persons who claim to be Muslim have declared me as persona non grata and deserving of scorn or even death merely because I am a Muslim and yet I protested against the MoA for being unconstitutional and excluding other stakeholders.

“While I respect everyone’s right to criticize, the threat of violence because of differences in opinion has no place in a democracy. Finally, Islam comes from the root word salaam which means peace and it is my hope that we can all debate on the MoA in a spirit of peace, respect, and brotherhood.”