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CATHOLIC bishops are calling for change in the Philippines.
It’s not the fist-in-the-air,
down-with-the-Arroyo-government plea. They are beckoning everyone to
change from within. They are calling for a true revolution, albeit a
less headline-grabbing one.
But instead of change in government as throngs
in this impoverished nation are hoping for, it would be
introspection and personal conversion that Church leaders are
advocating for.
In a pastoral letter read on Palm Sunday in
Metro Manila, Church leaders underscored their disapproval of
another People Power revolt and their preference to wait for the
2010 election before changing government.
Certainly, they have the experience and lessons
learned from People Power in 1986 and 2001 to justify the position.
After two popular revolts, the same oligarchy
albeit from different factions continues to rule the country. And
the Church isn’t even the first to point out this observation.
But still, the Church’s position reminds me of
a Pinoy watching the Pacquiao-Morales fight on free TV.
He’s already heard from the radio that the
Pacman won 114-113 in a split decision even before the fight, no
thanks to the commercials that take longer to air than one round of
boxing.
He knows how the fight will end. Yet, doubt
lingers and he sits out the extended fight and sees for himself if
Pacquiao indeed won.
The Church must have some idea where the country
is going now.
Resentment against government leaders is
evidently growing. If it hasn’t, how could civic groups afford to
organize massive rallies that resemble a cultural festival where
members of various social classes mingle unabashedly.
It looks like they do not believe that the
people’s resentment against the Arroyo government would grow
strong enough to cause her ouster from office.
It is clear from the pastoral letter that they
do not want the Philippines being handed down from one group of the
elite to another.
Observers old enough to be aware of the two
previous People Powers agree with the Church’s observation that
the conditions now are more like 1983 than 2000.
It took three years after the assassination of
Benigno Aquino Jr. on the tarmac of the international airport before
the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was finally ousted. If we wait three
years now, it’ll be 2010, election time.
Considering where the country has gotten after
two church-supported uprisings, it is understandable why the fathers
and the bishops are reluctant to get overly involved this time.
I suppose they want Filipinos to be adequately
educated and informed come the 2010 election so that we will not be
wowed by the flashy campaign ads or the money some politicians would
offer in exchange for the votes.
Perhaps they want us to put as much importance
to the value of our votes come 2010 as much as the voters during the
1986 snap election put in theirs.
Thousands who will be voting for the first time
in 2010 will have no memory of 1986 and perhaps only a vague
recollection of 2001. A vigorous education campaign to educate the
youth, in the streets if not in the classrooms, is underway.
There are sectors that dismiss the rallies
because they do not generate too impressive a following. Perhaps.
But education is a continuing thing.
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Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim’s son Manny was
arrested last week in a drug buy-bust. Lim’s refusal to pull
strings to get his son off the hook is highly impressive.
Now, if only other politicians are like that,
meaning, they do not bend laws just to protect kin and personal
interests, this country would be better off.
If President Arroyo would allow her husband to
be investigated properly in connection with the various allegations
flung at him over the years, the President would likely be a more
popular leader than she is now.
johnnavg@hotmail.com
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