DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Erap and the clergy
Sunday, 05 24, 2009
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In 1998, the clergy said Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada is not fit to run for president. So coordinated and vehement was their objection to Erap’s candidacy that they even went to the extent of issuing pastoral letters that were repeatedly read during the Sunday masses, exhorting the assembled faithful to vote for a candidate who is not what Erap is. Erap, nonetheless, won by a whooping majority of six million votes.
In 2001, at EDSA Dos, the clergy helped oust Erap from the presidency. They figured prominently during the oath taking of Acting President Gloria Arroyo at the EDSA Shrine. [A year before, Pope John Paul II had startled the world when he made a sweeping apology for 2,000 years of violence, persecution and blunders committed by the Catholic Church in the crusades, the massacre of French Protestants, the trial of Galileo and anti-semitism.] Four years after EDSA Dos, the Philippine clergy startled the country by publicly apologizing to Erap for their role in his removal from office in 2001 and their anti-Erapism before that. They said it was a big mistake.
Today, Erap is, by all indications, entertaining serious thoughts to run again for president, and the clergy are seriously saying the same thing they were saying in 1998: Keep out of politics; do not run for president; give others a chance, as if with Erap in the running, the others don’t stand a ghost of a chance at the presidency. Three ranking members of the clergy are even earnestly advising Erap to quit politics for good.
With that public pronouncement against Erap, the clergy have instantly given Erap’s putative candidacy for the May 2010 presidential elections the biggest boost. The clergy, it would seem, has never learned their lesson: the more the clergy flog Erap, the more their flock will gravitate to his side. In spite of know-it-alls in the Philippine political milieu, and in spite all the problems he had faced, Erap seems to enjoy more support from the Philippine grassroots than any other president since Ramon Magsaysay.
The clergy should realize that politics, especially the Philippine kind, is very divisive - and very unkind. Any member of the clergy who actively participates or makes public pronouncements in forums derisive of Erap is automatically transfigured as an adversary to the millions who still cling to Erap as their only hope. I’m sorry, Your Eminences and Your Graces, to report that this is the way the political chips fall in this country.
As it is, pastoral work of the clergy is already a full-time job. It should not be saddled with another full-time preoccupation and passion, such as engaging in politics by deriding the capabilities and qualifications of candidates, which - come to think of it! - is a resurrected form of the once-dreaded Inquisition. Our men of the cloth must heed the words of Pope Benedict XVI, who when he was yet Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, confessed to the sins of the Congregation's predecessor, the Inquisition, when he said: "Even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel."
The Philippine clergy need to realize by now that their voice in politics vis-à-vis Erap cannot negate Erap’s charisma with the masses. The clergy are not in touch with the people’s sentiments. They completely ignore the Erap mystique despite his mistakes. With their abysmal reading of what the masses really see in Erap and their unappreciative sense of what Erap can deliver, it is the clergy that must quit politics now and concentrate on things religious and spiritual.
When the clergy speak, they should not speak from a platform of infallibility; rather, they should speak from a becoming modesty to admit that they could be wrong. Thus, when they perorate from their pulpits and demonize Erap for what he had been as president for two and a half years, and that Erap must not be given a try at leading the people for another six years, they should realize that elections for the presidency is a political process, a matter between the electorate and the candidates who put themselves into the crucible of popular choice. The clergy have neither the competence to discern the choice of the electorate nor the moral right to impose on the politician what the latter must do.
The clergy overlook the Constitutional pronouncement that “sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” Erap is reading it right. With his Pasasalamat sa Masa, which has brought him back to the bosom of the people who catapulted him to the presidency in 1998, Erap appears emboldened to give it one more try. The clamor is there, and it is not for the clergy to counsel Erap to disregard that clamor.
As Chief Justice Reynato Puno had said in Tecson vs. Comelec (G.R. No. 161434 - March 3, 2004), “The better policy approach is to let the people decide who will be the next president, for on political questions, this court may err but the sovereign people will not. To be sure, the Constitution did not grant to the unelected members of this court the right to elect in behalf of the people.”
Paraphrasing that statement in regard to the stance of the clergy toward the candidacy of Erap in the May 2010 elections, it behooves the clergy to let the people decide if they want Erap to be their president again, for on political questions, the clergy may err but the sovereign people will not. To be sure, the Constitution did not grant to the clergy, unelected to any political position, the right to diminish the choices of the people as to who should be their president.
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