Gloria and God in the Philippines

Asia Times, March 12, 2008

by Cher S. Jimenez

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.

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