THE ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA, GAUDENCIO Cardinal Rosales, threw the weight of his ecclesiastical authority to quash revolution-mongering attributed to Sen. Benigno Aquino III, who warned of another People Power rising if the election was marred by ?massive fraud.?

Condemning the warning in extraordinarily strong language, the cardinal said it was ?crazy and irresponsible.?

Rosales made the stern statement in a talk with reporters, a week before the elections. He was asked by a reporter to comment on a statement by Aquino that people might again take to the streets if he were cheated in the elections.

In putting his foot down firmly on another street action as a mode to change political leadership, the cardinal reminded the public that the 1986 People Power Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship was an ?extraordinary situation.? ?You don?t do that again,? the cardinal said. ?That?s why we have laws now.?

In rejecting the extra-constitutional method of People Power to change political leadership, Rosales served notice that he was not aching to emulate the high-profile political activism of his predecessor, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and emphasized his contrast with Sin in asserting the Catholic Church?s influential role in Philippine politics.

Rosales does not fancy himself as a clone of Sin, and has taken the path of stabilizing legal institutions, such as regular elections, as the preferred mode of political leadership transitions.

Sin did not only stand as the bulwark of legal opposition against the oppressive, but stepped up his political activism with calls to people to take to the streets to depose unpopular regimes on two occasions: the People Power Revolution of 1986 and the second Edsa rising in 2001 to depose President Joseph Estrada, after his aborted impeachment trial for corruption.

Aquino was reported in the press as saying during a campaign sortie in Pangasinan that sovereignty resides in the people. ?If they feel that their will has been thwarted, I?m sure they will again regain sovereignty among themselves,? he added.

Aquino?s campaign speech was inflammatory, provocative and unduly alarmist. There is nothing profound in his statement that sovereignty resides in the people, and he has reduced this political axiom into an empty platitude and a banality. He is assuming too much that people will take to the streets to install him as president if he is cheated.

Rosales seems to be reading the mood of the people in these election with more prescience than Aquino, when he said there was no reason to call for any mass movement now. He appears to have learned the dangers of too often resorting to People Power, resulting in the undermining of the legal electoral system as the constitutional mode of leadership change.

Rosales pointed out that the situation in the 1986 People Power was different from situation now. ?Why inject that, and why infuse that in the present situation?? he said. ?Remember that, at that time there was a dictator and there with no credible election, only referendum, and it was as long as 20 years. Good heavens, do you repeat that? No, come on, let?s use our head. These are two different things.?

In raising the threat of another People Power in case of massive cheating, Aquino sought to resurrect the case of her mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, who was leading in the tally of the 1986 snap election results when the Marcos-controlled Commission on Elections declared Marcos the winner. The proclamation sparked widespread outrage from the international observers? team. The rigged results did not ignite People Power but sowed the seeds of the street revolution. What triggered people power was the military revolt of Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, chief of the Philippine Constabulary.

There were few people in the streets when Marcos was declared winner by the rubber-stamp Comelec and when Enrile and Ramos defected from Marcos. The crowds started to fill the streets after Sin called on the people to mass around the military camps to protect the rebel forces led by Enrile and Ramos who were in serious danger of being massacred by forces loyal to Marcos. It was Sin?s call that filled Edsa with people and swelled into a sea of humanity defying the armor of the dictatorial regime.

Massive election fraud alone did not send people to the streets in Edsa I. Other developments conspired to build up into the People Power Revolution.

In his simplistic reconstruction of the events surrounding Edsa I, and in his effort to wrap himself in the Edsa mystique and as heir to the Edsa tradition started by her mother, Noynoy Aquino seeks to reinvent Edsa as an event that will automatically replicate itself if he is cheated in the May 10 elections. No one owns the Edsa tradition, and much less Cory Aquino?s heirs.

No one knows this non-transferability of the Edsa mystique better than Cardinal Rosales. The people will not take to the streets in case Noynoy is wronged in the election, at the bidding of an outraged Noynoy Aquino. The most that can be expected is a strong backlash and outrage, but the cheated voters will not take directions from Noynoy. They will go to the streets on their own, but this time there?s no Cardinal Sin to mobilize them into an unstoppable mass.

Cardinal Rosales is more attuned to the public mood and knows the limits of the Church?s influence. Aquino may be leading in the surveys by a wide margin, but the public is not ready to die and be maimed in the streets to install another Aquino in Malacañang.

Rosales?s counsel to everyone is to give the electoral route a chance to work for a change.