MAINSTREAM ELEMENTS in the Catholic hierarchy and in the Senate are trying to avoid a head-on collision on the reproductive health bill, fearing that such a confrontation could have mutually damaging effects.
A group of senators is shying away from committing themselves to support the RH bill, until opinion crystallizes on the proposed legislation. They are waiting for results of public opinion surveys, with some senators, including Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada, serving notice that they were opposing the bill.
Sen. Joker Arroyo mirrored the cautious attitude of a number of senators when he said some of them were “open-minded” about the bill, and would only decide after considering the arguments in the debate in the Senate. For such an opinionated senator like Arroyo to exercise caution indicates a pragmatic acknowledgement of the political influence of the Church which is strongly opposing any measure intended to promote artificial population curbs.
Another group of senators, composed of Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Pia Cayetano, Egardo Angara and Panfilo Lacson, favor the legislation. Santiago, author of one version of the bill, conceded that there was no clear dividing line between senators opposed to and those favoring it. “Most senators will not commit at this time because they want to wait for developments in public opinion,” Santiago said. “What, for example, are the media reports or, if there are surveys on the subject, what the results are will influence them.” She pointed out that “senators are political creatures. They will react to what they feel is public pulse. If they felt for purposes of the 2013 election that it would be necessary to vote in favor of the RH bill, that’s what they’ll do.”
The senators are waiting for a “compromise” legislation that would embody amendments developing from the increasingly heated arguments between the Catholic constituency opposing the RH bill and secular sectors pushing for a more liberal use of contraceptives as a means to control fast population growth.
A spirited public opinion debate has developed over the support for the RH bill expressed by President Aquino, which is not considered by many senator as a key factor in the passage of the legislation. Opinion in Congress is fluid. How much support the President gets from Congress is secondary to the consideration of the advantages or disadvantages of members’ position on their political fortunes in the 2013 election.
In what has been considered an implied threat, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines recently suspended its dialogue with Malacañang on the RH bill, but left the door open for a resumption of the talks by distancing itself from calls by some prelates to launch a civil disobedience movement with a threat not to pay taxes in case the RH bill is passed. Bishop Nereo Odchimar, the CBCP president, said the group “does not have any official stand regarding civil obedience” and “did not discuss what action to take on civil disobedience.”
The threat elicited a negative reaction from the administration, which has been criticized by the Church for the President’s support for the RH bill which seeks, among other things, to promote sex education from Grade 5 and provide contraceptive pills to parents who wish to plan the size of their families. The President became even more defiant, saying he was prepared to face excommunication for supporting the measure, and warned that opponents threatening a civil disobedience campaign, including non-payment of taxes, faced sedition charges.
Although the Catholic hierarchy distanced itself from calls for a civil disobedience movement, it did little to restrain some of its bishops from stepping up their attacks on the Aquino administration. One of the more outspoken loose cannons of the Catholic hierarchy, Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz launched a broadside against Aquino on Sunday. He said the President’s support for population control programs was an official admission of his administration’s inability to undertake socioeconomic programs to ease poverty. Taking a tangential line of attack, Cruz said: “His government’s simplistic option and blatant decision is lessen (the number) of Filipinos for a better Philippines. Forgotten is the once proud cry ‘Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.’ Now the maxim is ‘Kung walang ipapanganak walang mahirap’ (If no child is born, there’s no poverty.”
Cruz added: “Instead of thinking of ways to produce more food and houses for the people, the government has subscribed to this idea that the less people eat, the more food there is, the fewer people are housed, the more houses there are. Let there be a dedicated, not a laid back, national leadership. Let there be a wise, not a dull, national government. Let there be an economically sagacious, not guns-and-girls-occupied Malacañang.”
Cruz said that the national economy, either its level of production or incidence of misery, depended much on the kind of leadership the country has. “It is not really dependent merely on the number of people there are in a given country,” he said. “It is competent or incapable, dull or intelligent leadership that makes the difference in the matter of a country enjoying affluence or suffering from destruction.”
End of homily.