BoholAnalysis

President Arroyo (PGMA), in her recent Bohol visit, lauded again the provincial government as a model for local efforts to reduce poverty and promote peace. Ironically, this declaration was set against a background of a series of robbery cases, unsolved political killings, and undocumented violence across the province. This recognition of Bohol, however, is not a recent phenomenon. Two years ago, the Galing Pook Foundation awarded the Bohol Poverty Reduction, Peace and Development Program as one of the best practices in local governance in the country in trying to promote peace, through poverty alleviation and development (GPF 2006). Poverty alleviation programs in Bohol started started out as an anti-insurgency solution rather than a design to achieve poverty reduction. As a matter of fact, one of the first maps related to the province’s poverty reduction efforts was an insurgency map which became the basis of the targeting of provincial poverty programs. Barangays were classified as

Today, I give birth to a monster. It can be a scary monster, or a monster hit, depending on how the wind blows, and depending on how you, as a reader, will take it. This monster I call....BoholAnalysis. Here, we discuss Bohol, not the way politicians would like to describe it, and certainly not the way tourism promoters would label the island. Don't take me wrong. This blog is not about the negative side of Bohol. It is a blog that talks about Bohol, critically, beyond the conventional labels. It is a blog about issues in Bohol and how an ordinary citizen like you, or me, views it, from a rather uninvolved and objective lens. It is a blog about Bohol without the hypocrisy, without the hype, absent the intended colors. This blog is that of a black god, ( see photo inset ) sitting close to a pool of water, looking intently at it, trying to figure out if indeed the fishes are alive, or if it is just the ripples that create the movement. If you can take this sense of nonsense, or bette