 Thank you for inviting me here. It is worth noting at the start that five months from now, the Philippines will be electing a new president to replace Rodrigo Deterte. His daughter, after all, is running for vice president and the daughter's presidential candidate. And who is at present topping election surveys is the son of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcus. So to a large extent, at stake in the May 2022 elections, is the 40-year-old democracy project in the Philippines, which started in 1986, when a people-power revolution ousted the dictator Marcus. I'd like to summarize the current situation through the lens, of course, of a journalist and cite four major stumbling blocks of democracy as we now experience them. First is really the weak-state accountability and continuing cultural continuity in the face of the crimes committed in the last six years under this regime. More than 20,000 people have been killed in the bloody Dargore, and there is virtually executive capture of the criminal justice system. Law enforcement authorities who are behind its killings and attacks have not been held to account. In fact, the international community has shown more concern. The prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into the bloody Dargore, but that investigation is getting lukewarm support from the government. Second would be what I would call the militarization of the peace process with the communist insurgents in my country. These weekend's civilian voices at no other time since we ousted the dictator. There have been decades-long effort to have a negotiated settlement with the communist insurgents, but this militarization of the peace process has allowed the military to bring the war beyond the battlefield, targeting civilians working in non-government organizations and various political parties. The third situation I would suppose is the weakening of the watchdog institutions, the media, civil society and human rights movements brought about by the erosion of public sphere through state-backed attacks and propaganda, such attacks being enabled by technology. And I think this would be our biggest stumbling lap right now. The fourth would be outside Metro Manila and in the provinces. There's really a lack of rigorous oversight and transparency of social development projects in conflict areas, most especially in the Muslim South, where there is still a Muslim rebellion and where situations thrive that appeal to extremist ideology, such as terrorism. And I think thinking both as a journalist and a citizen of a democracy under siege and under attack, I could think of probably three quick discussion points that we can later on expound on, what can be done. I think the biggest threat is really the manipulation of reality and social media, which we believe will have direct impact on the May 2022 presidential elections, which many of us believe is a make or break for this country. The battle for truth after all is not just journalism's battle now. And so what we'd like to see is for civil society, NGOs, media organizations to come together in meaningful conversations that would help carve a path that is more sustainable and more optimistic than what we have now. A trapper, for example, we have gone beyond exposing wrongdoing. As we speak, we have convened what we call the Hold the Line Coalition, which brings together lawyers, members of the Academe, the NGOs and journalists, both to plot short-term and long-term plans to combat not just this information, but really to hold platforms who really control our information highway now to account. And last would be, I think this would come from the journalists in me. For journalists, we need to amplify each other. And I think what we would need is really support and encouragement for more collaborative work, such collaboration, not just within the Philippines or Southeast Asia, but with cross-border reporting in other parts of the country. I think this is very urgent because the business model and media, as we know, is dying and therefore what we would need is some space to grow again, independent media that has been attacked and that has really suffered tremendously under this regime. Thank you.