The officers of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, Bishop Rodolfo A. Juan, Lissa Belle R. Brown, Raoul V. Victorino, Rev. Rex RB. Reyes Jr., Reynaldo M. Natividad, Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, appreciates President Duterte’s many initiatives at addressing the urgent needs of our nation.
We affirm his openness to diverse groups within our society, especially the basic sectors, whose representatives he has included in his Cabinet and other government agencies.
We appreciate his openness to engage in principled peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front and with armed groups in Mindanao. We pray that this commitment and openness will be maintained, and that the basic issues of injustice in our country, which have resulted in decades of unpeace, will be finally addressed.
We also call on the President to honor his commitment to release political prisoners as a fundamental confidence-building measure to ensure that the peace talks can proceed in an atmosphere of mutual trust.
We affirm his commitment to bring integrity and honesty to public service. His recent signing of an executive order on freedom of information (FOI) is a good sign of a well-meaning intention to ensure greater transparency in government. Given the FOI executive order’s many limitations, we remain hopeful that a more comprehensive FOI can be put into legislation.
We call on the President to ensure that effective measures are taken to dismantle political dynasties. It is high time an enabling law was passed to give flesh to this constitutional mandate.
We support his commitments to address the issues of the urban poor, and call on him to strongly maintain his position that demolition of informal settlements should not proceed without adequate relocation.
We call on the President to maintain his resolve to defend our national patrimony and sovereignty. We affirm the ongoing scrutiny on the mining companies in our country and their deleterious effects on our natural resources, environment and rural communities, particularly indigenous communities.
We call on the President to defend our sovereignty against the militaristic superpowers, to defend and preserve Filipino interests, and to ensure that we do not become simply a pawn in the game of great powers.
We call on the President to ensure the demilitarization of our rural communities, the dismantling of armed militias, and that members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines strictly respect the rights and dignity of our people.
As churches engaged in works of compassion, we have also witnessed the destructive effects of drugs on individuals and society and the corrupting effects of drug money in our political system. We support the President’s commitment to address this problem.
However, we call on the President to ensure that in the course of curbing this problem, legal processes are respected and human rights are protected; that drug dependents be treated with compassion and provided with opportunities to seek treatment; and that those who profit from this trade are made accountable.
We plead with the President to refrain from reintroducing death penalty which we consider a fundamental denial of a basic human right, an affront to the living God who has created every person in God’s own image, and an ineffective measure to deter crimes. Even in countries with more robust legal systems than our own, innocent people, especially the poor and those without the means of legal protection, are mostly the ones at the receiving end of the death penalty; how much more likely in our own country?
President Duterte was catapulted to our country’s highest office with significant support from diverse sectors of our society; he currently enjoys unprecedented levels of public trust; he has reintroduced hope into our national life. We call on him to honor the trust that the Filipino people have given him and to make real his promises of change.
We assure the President of our prayers and support, and we will continue to exercise our prophetic calling as churches to defend the interests of the poor and vulnerable, and ensure that their voices are heard.
“God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish” (Psalm 9:18).
The authors are officers of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines.