Antonio C. Abaya - President Panlilio?

My unsolicited advice to those who are pushing Pampanga Gov. Among Ed Panlilio and Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca into the presidential and vice-presidential race in 2010: Let us make haste slowly.

Unless there is an overwhelming groundswell of support for Panlilio-Padaca in 2009-2010, as there was for Cory Aquino-Doy Laurel in 1986, their entry into presidential politics will just further split the opposition to President Arroyo’s Lakas-Kampi-NPC mean machine, making it easier for the hated trapos and political dynasts to prevail.

In the 2004 presidential elections, the reformist candidate was TV Evangelist Eddie Villanueva. Despite a massive pre-election rally in the Luneta that supposedly drew one million attendees, Villanueva won only six percent of the votes and trailed way behind President Arroyo, FPJ, the late Raul Roco and Sen. Ping Lacson.

If FPJ, Roco, Lacson and Villanueva had joined together and backed only one opposition candidate, President Gloria would have been soundly defeated.

But the oppositionists did not unite in 2004, and chances are that they will not unite in 2010. Despite all the noble sentiments that accompany the Panlilio-Padaca float, it will just further split the opposition and allow Gloria’s anointed one – Gilbert Teodoro, Noli de Castro, or GMA herself in a parliamentary system – to win handily.

To be fair, Gov. Panlilio has not himself declared that he is seeking the presidency. He said that he was still in “a period of discernment….I will go for whoever will represent a genuine reform constituency. It does not necessarily have to be me. If there is a more appropriate candidate, why will I present myself? I look at my role now as more of one of the convenors of a genuine reform coalition…” (Inquirer, March 22)

However, it seems to be Gov. Panlilio’s over-eager backers who are throwing caution to the wind and pushing him and Gov. Padaca into presidential politics without much thought of the truth and consequences of their move. And who are these backers?

According to the Inquirer of March 23, their backers belong to a yet unnamed coalition who want to push for “alternative leaders” like Panlilio and Padaca, who the group said could rid the government of corruption and bring change to the country, they being non-traditional politicians.

Some of the backers have been identified: Kubol Pag-asa Community of “running priest” Fr. Robert Reyes; Pakisama, an umbrella group of farmers’ organizations; Philippine Alliance of Ex-Seminarians (PAX); and Kaya Natin, an Ateneo de Manila University-based movement promoting good governance, led by Harvey Keh.

Frankly, only Kaya Natin and Harvey Keh ring a bell, they being assiduous in sending emails daily in cyberspace. Can they pull it off? I doubt it, for reasons stated above. But let’s wait for the surveys of Pulse Asia and the Social Weather stations to see if Panlilio and Padaca are registering at all in people’s consciousness.

This early in his willy nilly dip into presidential politics, Gov. Panlilio – who is an ordained priest but is suspended from performing priestly duties - has to contend with negative feedbacks from his own home organization, the Roman Catholic Church.

Said San Fernando (Pampanga) Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, who is worried that the priesthood could be used for political ends: “The more a priest goes up the political ladder, the more it could be detrimental to his priesthood.”

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, an acknowledged expert on Church or canon law said Panlilio should leave the priesthood if he wanted to run for president, reminding Panlilio that universal Church law forbade clerics from assuming public office. “How can a priest be a politician at the same time (when there are) no less than two separate official and categorical Church prohibitions to be such.”

Cruz advised Panlilio to first get dispensation from all his clerical obligations “definitely and permanently.” Cruz said Panlilio should leave the priesthood now “so he would not drag the clergy and the Church into downright partisan politics” and “so he will not shame, divide or demean the clergy and the Church with his official blunders and personal liabilities…..Last and foremost, he will badly lose,” Cruz said. (Inquirer, March 23). Wow! Heavy!

Why doesn’t the Running Priest Robert Reyes instead run?

Does having a priest as president automatically provide a solution to government corruption? The empirical evidence is No. In Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, an ordained priest who was expelled from the Salesian order in 1988, was elected president twice, from 1994 to 1996, then from 2001 to 2004. Transparency International (TI) (www.transparency.org) has data on Haiti only from 2002 to the present.

In TI’s index of perception of corruption – the higher the number, the higher the perceived corruption – Haiti was ranked 89th out of 102 countries in 2002; 131st out of 133 countries in 2003; 145th out of 145 countries in 2004.

So, having a priest as president for three years did not help Haiti defeat corruption. If anything, corruption got even worse, and Haiti was adjudged the most corrupt country in the world during Aristide’s last year as president.

In Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, bishop of the diocese of San Pedro, won the presidential elections in April 2008. Pope Benedict XVI had rejected his resignation from the priesthood, but in July 2008, the Pope downgraded him to layman status so that he could assume the presidency.

It is too early to conclude if having a bishop as president has helped Paraguay fight corruption. In 2008, Paraguay was ranked 138th out of 180 countries. (Haiti was 177th.)

(Under our President Arroyo – who was put in power by the Lord, according to herself – the Philippines sank like a stone in Transparency International’s perception of corruption index:

(From 77th out of 102 countries in 2002, to 98th out of 133 in 2003; to 102nd out of 145 in 2004; to 117th out of 158 in 2005, to 121st out of 163 in 2006; to 131st out of 179 in 2007; and 141st out of 180 countries in 2008).

Personal holiness, whether real or faked, has nothing to do with being effective in fighting corruption. The best and only way to fight corruption is to prosecute and jail those who are corrupt. It is as simple as that. How does Gov. Panlilio fare by this rule of thumb?

In my article Fr. Ed’s Pampanga, of August 27, 2007, I heaped praises on Gov. Fr. Among Ed Panlilio for having collected P29.4 million in quarrying fees in his first month in office, compared to only P29 million collected by his predecessor Mark Lapid in an entire year.

To my simple, non-legal mind, this was direct evidence of monkey business during the Lapids’ governorship (Mark had succeeded his own father Lito, now senator), and I had expected an investigation of the huge discrepancy and prosecution of those who had stolen about P325 million in quarrying fees every year.

But apparently Gov. Panlilio ordered no such investigation, and the plunderers have been allowed to carry on as if nothing monumentally corrupt had taken place.

Gov. Panlilio has to do better than that if he wants to convince us that as president he can rid the country of corruption and bring about a much needed moral change in our politics. He has the next six or seven months to prove that he has what it takes to fight corruption.

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

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