Wednesday, November 05, 2008 Carvajal: The bishops are not bad guys By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
READING the rebuttals of President Arroyo’s defenders, you would think the five bishops are the bad guys. I have written earlier about how Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez saw sedition in their statement as he denied that the government has done nothing to stop corruption. Yet, he could only cite the creation of a task force against corruption that the whole world knows has done practically nothing.
House Speaker Prospero Nograles came on next to accuse the bishops of rash judgment, adding that the high officials of the Church should be teaching us instead not to judge others rashly. But how can the Speaker possibly call it rash judgment on the part of the bishops when survey after world survey puts us high up there in the corruption ladder? How can it be a rash judgment when every Juan experiences corruption in all the nooks and crannies of the government bureaucracy?
How can it be rash judgment when PGMA has pardoned former president Joseph Estrada, a convicted plunderer, has not moved aggressively against the plunder case of Gen. Carlos Garcia, has done nothing to punish the culprits of the NBN bribery case and seems to be letting off the hook those involved in the lamp post scandal in Cebu, to mention some notable corruption cases?
How can calling for a new government be seditious when the bishops are only expressing the fears of many that any attempt to change the Constitution before 2010 and through a constituent assembly could only be intended to keep the present administration in power? If it isn’t so, then why is Speaker Nograles rushing to do it and unilaterally by themselves as a constituent assembly?
What also got my goat was when I read a columnist actually bad mouth the bishops in arguing that they should not stir up discontent among the people but help them cope with hard economic times. The bishops are not stirring discontent but simply lending their voice to those who have been abandoned to their own devices by this corrupt and inept government.
We have been weakened at a very fundamental level by corruption and incompetence in high places. The best way to strengthen ourselves against a recession that could hit us in 2009 is to prevent corruption from further weakening the economic foundations of this country. President arroyo once declared that because of E-VAT we have the money to strengthen the national economy. She would have been right if not for her allowing corruption to fritter away the gains from E-VAT.
It is clear from the responses of pro-administration personalities that the five bishops have spoken rightly. They are not the bad guys. If we must fault our bishops, it has to be for just a few speaking softly and late about sins of corruption that cry to heaven for vengeance.
