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February 27, 2008

Arroyo has waived authority to govern, says Protestant group

by Maurice Malanes
Ecumenical News International

MANILA — The government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines has forfeited its right to govern, says the biggest Protestant grouping in this predominantly Roman Catholic southeast Asian nation.

“General mistrust, cynicism and disgust have replaced public trust in government,” said the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) in a recent statement.  “When public trust is lost, the moral ascendancy to govern is lost.  By its own actions it [the Arroyo government] has waived its legitimacy.”

The Feb. 12 statement, signed by the council’s general secretary, the Rev. Rex Reyes, and its chairperson Bishop Nathanael Lazaro, adds to a renewed public uproar over the government’s recent attempt to silence a key witness in an aborted $329 million national Internet broadband deal with a Chinese company.

After the former president of the State-run Philippine Forest Corporation, Rodolfo Lozada, Jr, had testified in the country’s Senate on Feb. 7 that a former election commissioner took $130 million in kickbacks from the broadband deal, the NCCP as well as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines renewed a campaign they have been waging against corruption.

The national church council urged “fervent prayers for deliverance and for truth to prevail” in  referring to the probe on the irregular deal. The Catholic bishops called for “communal action,” in the form of prayers, holding discussion forums, or helping raise funds for the protection of witnesses such as Lozada against those seeking to maintain corruption.

In a growing crescendo of criticism against the Arroyo administration, former Philippines president Fidel Ramos on Feb. 22 bewailed how gains from the 1986 and 2001 “people power” revolts were lost due to “greed, corruption, and apathy,” the Manila Times newspaper reported.