I have seen UP law professor Harry Roque in action in so many legal complications on behalf of the less privileged. I have admired the guy’s perspicacity, dedication and perseverance. But after reading “Go easy on Iglesia, lawyer warns” (News, 11/6/15), it got me looking up the sky and wondering: What has happened to him? Ah, he is a candidate/nominee of the Kabayan party-list in the next elections!
When politicians appropriated large spaces in newspapers to greet the Iglesia ni Cristo’s top honcho on his birthday, it came as no surprise. True to their “trapo” character, they really have no shame advertising their loyalty to the religious group that commands significant voting preferences.
But Roque? Well, read his lips: “Their being part of a religious minority does not mean they deserve less in law; on the contrary, because they’re a minority the more they deserve its full protection.”
Nice rhetoric, but totally disingenuous! Less privileged? Haha! He has conveniently forgotten how the group has parlayed their mastery of the ways of “bloc-voting” into so much political advantage and privilege!
Our entire government bureaucracy is bursting at the seams with appointees recommended by the INC; our police agencies are run by officers with unbreakable ties to the INC; our courts have too many magistrates hiding in the INC closet; our Department of Labor and Employment is helpless against the INC which defies with impunity the basic right of an employee to security of tenure by sanctioning “endo” at the end of the contract for probationary employment; and so forth and so on.
Instead of showing his bleeding heart, Roque should denounce the INC for its “bloc-voting” practices that undermine freedom of choice and subvert the principles of a democratic free election. What the INC does is an exercise in totalitarian rule, treating its subjects like a bunch of automatons. Any member who does not toe the line is condemned “straight to hell” (“Expelled INC members ‘going straight to hell,’” Front Page, 11/5/15)! And Roque is okay with that?
—ANNALEE LAUDER, annaleelau@gmail.com