Aquino now the chief corruptor of Congress

By Francisco S. Tatad

Stung by his unbelievably narrow margin during the vote on second reading of the highly controversial reproductive health bill in the House of Representatives last week, President Benigno Aquino III has mobilized all his forces to score a decisive win when the House takes it up on third reading.  Aquino is used to getting what he wants, but the anti-RH bloc may not make it easy for him this time.

Despite its having been outvoted  during the first round,  the anti-RH bloc paradoxically appears to be more confident now than ever before.  It  got a big boost yesterday when Filipino Catholics all over the country trooped to the first of the nine-day predawn pre-Christmas masses called Misa de Gallo or Simbang Gabi, and listened to homilies from the pulpit and a pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on the evil of the RH bill.

Entitled “Contraception is Corruption!”, the letter was signed by Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, CBCP vice president, on behalf of Archbishop Jose S. Palma of Cebu, CBCP president, who is attending an Asian bishops’ conference abroad.  It congratulated the 104 congressmen who voted against the bill, while 113 voted in favor, and called upon the 64 others who  failed to cast their votes to be “enlightened and stand up for the Truth.”

“Do not be swayed by worldly pressures,” the letter said to the 64, “say no to contraception, which is corruption, and be faithful to the Christ Child who was pro-woman, pro-child and pro-poor. Be the champion of the people who voted for you.”

Reiterating a powerful statement he first made during a prolife and pro-family rally at EDSA not too long ago, the Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan said,  “contraception corrupts the soul.” “The RH bill is being gift-wrapped to look like a gift for maternal health care,” he said.  But if enacted into law,  “it will put the moral fiber of the nation at risk, and lead to the destruction of family life and greater violence against women,” he added.

The RH bill will not improve  the lives of the poor, contrary to its claim, the Archbishop said. “The poor can rise from their misery through more accessible education, better hospitals and lesser government corruption.  Money for contraceptives can be better used for education and authentic health care,” he argued.

Aquino has already paid a high price for his effort to divide an already divided nation through the bill.   But it could go higher still.  After  subjecting the congressmen to the same pressure he  had  used in impeaching then-Chief Justice Renato Corona,  whom the Senate subsequently convicted, and dangling before them hundreds of millions of pesos in “projects” in exchange for their votes, all he got was  a measly nine-point margin when the congressmen voted.

No wonder Aquino appears sorely disappointed.  He had sent four of his Cabinet members to the House  to monitor the proceedings and make sure the promised votes were  delivered.  But apparently the most they could do was to convince some who could not support the measure not to vote anymore so as “not to embarrass the President.”

These included one high-profile congressman who, at one point, was being touted as the leader of the anti-RH bloc.  He participated in the period of amendments but ultimately left the session hall before the voting started.

Had the absentees decided to vote,  the pro-RH side might have lost,  and Aquino  roundly humiliated before his foreign patrons, who had openly pushed for the vote.

The exact price Aquino will have to pay is not easy to calculate.   In using the vast powers of his office and the humungous pork barrel under his control to buy the congressmen’s votes,   the self-proclaimed “nemesis” of corruption has  become the chief corruptor of Congress, the principal  promoter of  graft—and a deeper and more virulent institutionalized form of graft and corruption at that.

In the process, Aquino has revealed the utter vacuity and bogus character of his “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” (The poor would not exist if the corrupt did not)—and his so-called “Daang Matuwid” (The straight and narrow path). He has exposed these as a fraud.

One question asks itself: If Aquino is convinced that the RH bill is good for the nation, not just for the population controllers and the condoms and contraceptives manufacturers, why did he have to use the taxpayers’ money to buy anyone’s votes?  Why did he require his own  ruling Liberal Party,  at the prompting of Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas and Senator Franklin Drilon, to impose the pro-RH position as the official party line, instead of allowing party members to vote on the issue according to their conscience?

What exactly is the payoff from the foreign population controllers, who staged a big family planning “summit” in Manila, to announce to the whole world that they had him and the country’s corporate establishment inside their pocket?  How does Aquino intend to survive as “president” of an “independent” republic after he has been proclaimed, without any objection on his part, as an unabashed and undisguised foreign puppet?

What exactly does Aquino expect to gain by trampling upon the moral convictions and religious beliefs of the Catholic majority, and in the process dividing the country and creating an unwanted institutional opposition to his presidency?  Until now, he had been able to congratulate himself for achievements he had absolutely nothing to do with, including the country’s economic performance, which has been the work of 12 million overseas Filipinos, and still part of the momentum of an economic program that ironically belongs to the scandal-ridden but economically defensible Gloria Macapagal Arroyo presidency?

In an effort to press what he obviously perceives to be a tactical advantage, Aquino has  certified the RH bill as urgent so that it could be voted on third reading before the anti-RH group could consolidate its ranks.  At the same time, he has redoubled his personal efforts and those of his political agents to persuade those who had voted against the bill to change their position, in exchange for the infamous political pork.

But these efforts could still be frustrated.   Led by Congressman Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro, the bloc  has questioned the constitutionality of the bill’s certification, and the law appears to be on its side.  Under the Constitution,  the President may certify the necessity of  a bill’s immediate enactment “to meet a public calamity or emergency,”  without having to require the distribution of its printed copies to members of the House that passed it three days before it is voted upon.

But just exactly what public calamity or emergency does Aquino seek to address, is not clear to anyone.   The only calamity known to the nation is the recent typhoon Pablo, which inflicted extensive death and destruction upon the country, especially in Compostela Valley in Mindanao.  But the RH bill has nothing to do with it.

Obviously the intention is to prevent  the anti-RH bloc from gaining time to solidify its ranks, especially with the poor packing all the churches to overflowing during the nine-day “simbang gabi.”   At press time, it was being claimed that printed copies of the bill had been distributed on Friday to enable a third reading today (Monday).  If this is true, what then was the reason for the certification on Friday?

The CBCP pastoral letter makes no adverse or negative reference to those who voted for the RH bill. But this is no guarantee that priests, nuns, laymen and lay women will not use the Advent season  to campaign  against the pro-RH politicians ahead of the campaign season.  Their names have been published, c  and many Catholic laymen and women are eager to demonstrate that, contrary to everything that has been said about the absence of a Catholic vote, there is indeed a Catholic vote, which could be activated whenever necessary.

An early parish-based campaign against  pro-RH candidates should also help inform the public on the issue in a way they have not been informed until now.  Most of the 217 congressmen tried to explain their votes last week. But  none of the “pros” said anything to persuade anyone that the bill was either necessary or constitutional.

None of them was bold enough to speak of  “overpopulation”  as they used to do in the past. They obviously have those heard that the world’s real crisis is the “depopulation”  or  “demographic winter”, which has already engulfed a number of countries in all severity.

No one also spoke anymore of people as the cause of poverty as they used to do in the past. They obviously have heard of human capital, and realized that in an election year they could not be asking for votes from people if they considered them the enemy of a “sustainable environment.”

But some of them still spoke of maternal deaths as the reason why there must be an RH law.  They spoke of women dying while pregnant or during childbirth, without talking of the far greater numbers of women dying of cancer, heart and respiratory diseases, diabetes, tuberculosis, and other killer diseases without any  state support.

Despite Congressman Rodolfo Biazon’s fanciful claim of an unverified demand from an overwhelming majority of the women he met for an RH law, no one dared to refute or offer a story different from that of Congressman Antonio Alvarez of Palawan who said that in his 27 years of uninterrupted service as an elective public official, he had received all sorts of requests for help for every conceivable  need from his constituents, but not once had he ever received a request for condoms or contraceptives.

Nor was there any attempt on the side of the pros to respond to be points made by several congressman but probably best articulated by Pangasinan’s Congresswoman Gina de Venecia, who said the RH bill was nothing but a population control bill masquerading as a reproductive health measure.  Has not the bill overstepped its bounds in choosing to interfere in the family life of citizens? De Venecia asked. “Is it appropriate for the state to prescribe the size of family one must have? Is it fitting for the state to mandate when our children should be taught sex education and by whom?”

Nor was there any attempt by the pro-RH side to show that Cebu’s youthful Rachel Marguerite (Cutie) del Mar was simply imagining things when she said the bill “disrespects basic religious belief and treats it as if it were separate —or could be separated—from the daily life of a Catholic believer who must live his faith, as if faith in God could be easily explained away in economic and demographic terms, and Catholic citizenry would just meekly submit.”

With clarity and vigor Del Mar expressed the position of many when she pointed out that the bill “wrongly assumes that Filipinos are a people of ‘shallow faith’ and ‘feeble conviction’, who with the passage of time would embrace a bad law, as if such a  law eventually would become good, as if religious belief and resistance to the law would crumble in the face of repressive legal sanctions.”

The only acceptable response to that would be to demonstrate by superior reasoning and facts that the objection is ill-founded and wrong.  But Aquino’s response is to throw the awesome powers of the presidency and its mighty pork at the issue and try to manufacture a cash-oriented majority to support a perverted view of  law and reality.