Useless threats, useless spiels

Catholic bishops earlier threatened presidential and congressional candidates who support the birth control bill their withdrawal of support come election day, unless these candidates turn their back on the same legislative measure.

That’s really a laughable stand, coming from these prelates, given the fact that they neither have a solid Catholic vote bloc, nor control or even influence the Filipino Catholics.

Furthermore, if such is the issue on which the bishops stand, their support for or against such candidates won’t count for any meaning, even in the Catholic lay community, since surveys on this issue of the birth control bill show that a preponderant majority of Filipinos support this bill.

Politicians should just ignore these threats raised by the bishops, because they really don’t have any impact on the voters, most of whom anyway believe that the Catholic church leaders shouldn’t engage in politics.

As it turns out, even the Pampangos weren’t keen on seeing a Catholic priest as their governor. The recount of the Pampanga governorship vote is showing only too clearly that Gov. Ed Panlilio lost the vote — miserably too, and that he, like Noynoy Aquino, is a product of the establishment media hype.

Why the bishops believe that they continue to hold influence over their flock is puzzling, unless of course it is pure bravado when they issue threats they know won’t work on the electorate, and even their flock.

Even as early as the late 1990s, and even with a Jaime Cardinal Sin leading the bishops in political statements for or against a candidate, especially during the presidential run of Joseph Estrada, nothing that they said against Estrada created a dent among the poor, who make up the bulk of the electorate. The bishops certainly went on a negative publicity overdrive against Estrada, picturing him as a boozer, a womanizer and a gambler, yet none of these attacks drove the electorate to go against him.

In the same fashion, these same groups of civil socialites who moved to oust Estrada and demonized him all they could, failed to get the masses on their side, despite an arrest, trial and conviction for plunder of Estrada.

To this day, Estrada lives in the hearts of the masses, who continue to lodge their trust and hope in him, which is why there is that concerted effort from various groups and individuals to pressure Estrada into quitting the presidential race, yet ironically, the same groups seek his endorsement for their candidates.

The latest move to destroy Estrada came from Ping Lacson, in his bid to paint Estrada black and a murderer to boot, even as he admits that he “exposes” these to ensure that the Filipinos do not vote for Estrada so that he will not be able to return to Malacañang.

While Ping and his boys and even the anti-Erap media will hardly admit it, Lacson’s attack on Erap destroyed Lacson rather than Estrada.

It’s elementary. If, as the surveys showed, that the majority do not believe Estrada enriched himself while he was president, despite his conviction, and believe he is being politically persecuted, but who continued to lodge their trust and faith in Estrada even as he was detained for over six years and demonized by the hypocritical elite civil society, why do Lacson, the bishops, the civil society believe that such privilege speeches painting Erap as a murderer, a jueteng lord and a bully, destroy him?

Similarly, the Noynoy-Mar Roxas tandem, with the bishops also echoing the line, has come up with the claim of the elections being a case of “good versus evil,” replicating the 1985 campaign spiel of the opposition against Ferdinand Marcos.

But this spiel is not only laughable, coming as it does from the tandem and their civil socialites, considering the fact that this same civil society group, in the early days of the Gloria regime, scammed the Filipino people of P35 billion through the PeaceBonds scam, where the group of Soliman and Camacho netted a cool P1 billion of public money for which they do not account to the Filipino people. Yet they have the nerve to portray themselves as the “good” against the “evil,” meaning everyone else.

These are the types who turn people off: Those who preach morality and goodness while they themselves prove to be immoral and hypocritical — no different really from the prelates who preach against birth control, even as some of their priests and bishops impregnate women. –Ninez Cacho-Olivares, Daily Tribune