Bishops also have feet of clay

It is now becoming increasingly clear that bribery was an underlying practice of the previous administration. Congressmen were routinely bribed with pork barrel and with shopping bags filled with cash when they went to Malacañang for meetings, and now with ambulances. Business interests were made to overprice projects so government functionaries could get kickbacks. Fertilizer was overpriced so kickbacks could be distributed to administration favorites.

Now it has been revealed that even bishops have feet of clay. These supposed men of God, and therefore incorruptible, have been gifted with expensive vehicles to silence criticism of the administration.

It has also become clear that the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which was created to help the poor, was used by the previous administration as a milking cow to fund its bribes.

Who was it who said that he would accept donations even from the devil if it would help the poor? Well, the SUV gifts to the Catholic bishops were not for the poor. They were for the personal use of the bishops. What happened to the vow of poverty of members of the clergy?

The guilty feeling of the bishops is also becoming evident when one of them said that the bishops named in the exposé would “answer as a group” at the Senate inquiry. It could be embarrassing for each of them to answer questions relating to the vehicles, so they would most likely answer questions in vague, general terms, as a group. It has become clear that bishops are also human and succumb to temptations that humans are heir to.

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As many poor Filipinos only know too well, it is very difficult to get help from the PCSO to pay for medical needs. You have to wade through a sea of people and swirls of red tape to get the pittance that the PCSO gives.

But if you are a bishop or a congressman or a governor, it is easy to get from the PCSO ambulances and even luxury vehicles. Yet the idea behind the PCSO is to help the poor, not the bishops and congressmen.

The PCSO has given ambulances to almost all cities and towns. But many towns have no hospitals. So where would the ambulances take the patients?

Every day, some of those ambulances can be seen running around Metro Manila. What are they doing there? Probably the wives of the mayors are shopping at the malls.

Let’s face it, some of those ambulances have been caught smuggling drugs. Others have been used by the wives of local officials to go marketing. Or to use them for purposes not associated with an ambulance.

And how much commission does the PCSO man get for each purchase of an ambulance or an SUV? Maybe not as much as the 40 percent that the PCSO advertising manager allegedly got from advertising contracts, but considering the number of ambulances bought, it must come up to a big amount, nevertheless.

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Filipino farmers have fought and died for land since the Spanish colonial times. The underlying cause of the Philippine Revolution and the many rebellions before that was the hunger for land. The Filipino farmer wants to own his farm, not to work as a tenant for some absentee landlord. That is why it is understandable why the tillers of Hacienda Luisita are protesting the Supreme Court order to hold a referendum as to whether they want land or shares of stocks.

The stock scheme was invented for Hacienda Luisita during the administration of President Cory Aquino to avoid distributing the land to the farmers under the agrarian reform law. The farmers were made to choose and vote for either land or stocks. The management persuaded many of the farmers to vote for the stock scheme with promises of easy income. It has not turned out that way, however. They only get a pittance as dividends from the hacienda, they said. They would get much more if they just rented out the land they would get. In other words, the farmers want to be landlords themselves.

The referendum ordered by the Supreme Court is the third. In the previous referenda, the stock option also won. That is why the opposing farmers are afraid that in the newest referendum, the stock option plan would also win. They don’t want any more referendum. They want the land to be distributed now, while they are still alive.

Hacienda Luisita was sold by Tabacalera to the Cojuangcos on condition that it would later on be distributed to the tenants. But leave it to the hacenderos to find a way around that condition and around the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). Out of thin air, they invented the stock option plan, and decades after the passage of CARL, Luisita tenants still toil under the boots of landlords. Could this thing have happened if Cory was not the president then? Can this thing happen now if her son is not the president?

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Are hospitals being used by suspected criminals as refuge? The lawyers of Zaldy Ampatuan, one of the principal accused in the Maguindanao Massacre, have asked the court to allow him to be confined at St. Luke’s Medical Center for diabetes. His blood pressure and blood sugar are going up and down, his lawyers said.

There are millions of diabetes patients but they do not need to be confined in a hospital. All that is needed is not to be a glutton and to take your medication. Fluctuating blood pressure does not need hospital confinement either. High blood pressure is easily controlled with medication.

Hospitals should not allow themselves to be used as safehouses by suspected criminals. And doctors should not be too willing to bow to the requests of criminal patients that they be certified to need hospitalization. Hospitals are becoming notorious as asylums for criminals.