Gloria and God in the
Philippines By Cher S Jimenez
MANILA - Mounting popular calls for
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's resignation on
corruption charges have sharply divided the
Philippines' politically powerful Roman Catholic
clergy into pro- and anti- government camps.
Now new charges that the embattled premier
may have curried favor with certain influential
religious groups with alleged secret cash handouts
threaten to further escalate the political
conflict and sully the clergy's reputation as a
source of moral authority amid the country's rough
and tumble politics.
Numerous scandals
have stuck to Arroyo's administration, starting
with her alleged rigging of the 2004 elections,
the alleged use of the country's fertilizer fund
to finance her campaign drive, and now charges
that her husband and a close political
associate
received
millions of dollars worth of kickbacks on a US$329
million state broadband Internet infrastructure
deal tendered to the Chinese-run ZTE Corporation.
The tainted project has since been
canceled, but the political controversy has
intensified through a series of raucous
anti-government street protests and the widely
respected Catholic clergy now finds itself
uncomfortably caught in the middle. The Catholic
Bishops' Conference of the Philippine (CBCP), a
collegial and influential body of 131 top bishops,
after a marathon emergency meeting in late
February, failed to support the political
opposition's and civil society groups' calls for
Arroyo's ouster.
A statement released from
that meeting said that while the bishops broadly
condemned corruption, which they concurred had
reached the president's office, the religious
group would stop short of calling on the president
to step down. They did, however, ask the president
to repeal Executive Order 464 - which she has
since done - which barred government officials
from testifying before an ongoing Senate inquiry
into the botched infrastructure deal without her
permission.
The CBCP's seemingly
contradictory statement on top-level corruption
came as a surprise to many Catholic devotees,
which apart from spiritual guidance have looked on
the clergy for moral guidance during times of
political confusion. There is a growing sense
among some Filipinos that the clergy's political
judgment could be clouded by government money
doled out to church donation boxes. While the CBCP
has long condemned all forms of gambling, casino
and lottery revenues are often distributed to
influential bishops and church groups.
However, a controversial CBCP meeting in
2006, where an envoy to the Presidential Palace
reportedly handed out envelopes full of cash to
the group's bishops, has now awakened large
sections of the population to the extent of
Arroyo's possible patronage to the clergy.
Charges, unsubstantiated, of money
changing hands now hound Arroyo every time she
meets with influential clergy members, including
when a group of priests from her home province
encircled and spoke special prayers to her the day
before an interfaith mass rally on February 29.
At no point in the Philippines' modern
history has the Catholic clergy been so
politically divided. Bishops have openly debunked
each other's political views, including Bishop
Juan de Dios Pueblos, an influential clergyman
from Butuan province and member of the CBCP, who
warned the head of the clergy, Iloilo Archbishop
Angel Lagdameo, that he stands to get ousted from
his post for airing anti-government statements
without prior consultation with the CBCP.
While the CBCP has released a number of
pastoral statements during its biannual meetings,
stating the clergy's position on the various
scandals involving Arroyo, it was the first time
that the so-called Mindanao and Northern Luzon
blocs of the clergy had come out to express their
all-out support for Arroyo. That unified regional
stand from the two influential blocs was
unprecedented, according to church sources.
On the other side of the godly divide,
priest Robert Reyes, a well-known Arroyo critic,
has said that the CBCP's refusal to take on the
voice of the people in opposition to the
government has "reduced the clergy to
irrelevance". Several senior clergy members were
seen in attendance at recent mass anti-government
interfaith prayer rallies held in Manila,
including CBCP leader Lagdameo.
Archbishop
Oscar Cruz, a former CBCP president, said recently
that the division among the clergy is "not a
question of faith and morals, where we are united,
but of a judgment call on the ethical dimension of
a government". Bishop Broderick Pabillo,
meanwhile, was seen at the February 29 interfaith
rally, but refused to go on stage or entertain
media interviews.
Pabillo, head of the
CBCP's social arm, sat beside Rodolfo Noel Lozada
Jr, the opposition's whistleblower in the ZTE
corruption case, when he first presented himself
to the media after coming out of hiding in Hong
Kong due to concerns for his personal safety.
The fractured clergy marks a stark
contrast to the pivotal role men of the cloth
played in mobilizing the masses in 1986, when
so-called people's power rallies overthrew
Ferdinand Marcos' authoritarian and corrupt
government. Then the clergy rallied around the
straight-talking Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin,
who emerged as a force of moral authority for the
disenfranchised masses; today, no such charismatic
figure has emerged to check or challenge Arroyo's
legitimacy.
Friends in high
places That's in part because Arroyo
has deftly played the religion card. The
Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country
and senior bishops have in the past flexed their
moral authority to affect political outcomes,
including elections and crucial laws and
legislation.
But a series of controversial
incidents, many involving financial links to
Arroyo's administration, has called the clergy's
own legitimacy into question. Nueva Vizcaya Bishop
Ramon Villena recently admitted in a newspaper
report that the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes
Office (PCSO), the lottery run by the Office of
the President, had given him 1.6 million pesos
(US$39,000) to build a hospital for the poor in
his home province. However, the total assistance
given to Villena's province, according to the
report, was 3.2 million pesos.
The report
also showed that the Catholic Church-run Radio
Veritas received more than 2 million pesos in ad
placements from the PCSO, which while not
necessarily a new development, represented a huge
increase in the amount of government funds doled
out for similar initiatives in the past.
"That gifts or money would blind the eyes
of bishops and seal their lips to gross corruption
when solidly proven would be a tragic
contradiction to their experience as pastors at
Edsa I and Edsa II," said Cotabato Archbishop
Orlando Quevedo, a former CBCP president,
referring to the clergy's participation in past
people's power movements which overthrew corrupt
governments.
The CBCP's current president,
Lagdameo, while quiet on previous scandals
involving Arroyo and despite the issuance of
carefully worded joint CBCP statements, has
personally attacked the embattled premier since
the ZTE scandal broke out. Two of his statements
called on the people to engage in "communal
action" and get involved in a "brand new people
power", which was interpreted by many as calling
for a new people's power movement. Lagdameo's
statements were strongly criticized by pro-Arroyo
bishops.
Before Lagdameo took the CBCP's
helm, its previous leader, Fernando Capalla, was a
personal friend to Arroyo. Church insiders say
that Capalla, who also sat as one of the
government's peace negotiators in talks with
Muslim secessionists, was frequently escorted by
presidential guards from the airport whenever he
flew into Manila.
It was thus notable,
some say, that during Capalla's tenure when
explosive vote-rigging charges against Arroyo
broke that the bishops did not support calls for
her resignation or impeachment. When a government
agent who claimed responsibility for wiretapping a
conversation between Arroyo and a senior election
official in 2004 in which the two appear to have
predetermined vote counts for various
constituencies across the country took refuge at a
Manila seminary, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales
ordered that he be turned over to the military.
Rosales, who is a relative to one of
Arroyo's closest aides, has admitted in press
interviews that he has received a 1 million peso
donation from the Presidential Palace for his
various livelihood projects targeting Manila's
poor populations. As successor to the
incorruptible Cardinal Sin, many Filipinos have
looked on Rosales to be a strong voice against
government abuse.
Cebu Archbishop Ricardo
Cardinal Vidal, who was the CBCP's president when
the clergy called for a civil disobedience
campaign after Marcos rigged the results of 1986
snap elections against Corazon Aquino, has
likewise shot down calls for the clergy to endorse
Arroyo's resignation. Despite his key role in
orchestrating Marcos' ouster, the senior clergyman
has said a declaration against Arroyo is beyond
the clergy's authority and should be left to the
political opposition.
Where bishops have
failed to take a unified stand, Catholic nuns
notably have in their statements and actions. For
instance, they have stood guard around Lozada, the
key opposition witness in the Senate inquiry into
the ZTE scandal, to provide divine protection
against possible assassination - a move that
evoked images of activist nuns holding rosaries
and blocking military tanks during the
Philippines' first people's power revolution in
1986.
Most of the nuns belonged to the
Association of Major Religious Superiors of the
Philippines, a network of 200 congregations with a
long track record of involvement in national
sociopolitical issues, dating to the period of
martial law in the 1970s. But then, as now, the
nuns lack the clout of the bishops, which Arroyo
has effectively divided and ruled to her political
advantage.
Cher S Jimenez
is a reporter for the Business Mirror daily
newspaper. She was recently a Yuchengco media
fellow at the University of San Francisco, where
she conducted research on undocumented Filipino
migrants.
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