By Leila Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:36:00 05/03/2010
MANILA, Philippines—A senior church prelate Sunday said that warnings of another “people power” outburst if next week’s elections were marred by massive fraud were “crazy (and) irresponsible” and the conditions that produced the 1986 popular revolt were not present now.
“The laws are not done in the streets,” Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales said in a talk with reporters, adding that the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos was “an extraordinary situation.”
“You don’t do that again. That’s why we have the laws now,” he added.
Rosales made the statement when asked by a reporter to comment on a statement by Liberal Party standard-bearer Benigno Aquino III that people might again take to the streets if he were cheated of victory in the presidential election.
Rosales said he had not heard anyone make that statement but that he disagreed with such sentiments.
“I did not hear that but if anyone said that, that is (an) irresponsible statement,” he said.
People are sovereign
Aquino, the front-runner in surveys conducted by the polling outfits Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia, was quoted in a media report as saying during a campaign sortie in Pangasinan province that “sovereignty resides in the people.”
“If they feel their will has been thwarted, I’m sure they will again regain sovereignty among themselves,” he said.
The same report quoted Aquino as saying that “it’s premature to call for people power.”
An ABS-CBN report last week quoted dissident Marine Capt. Nicanor Faeldon as saying that if politicians manipulated the results of the elections, “the people will come out … We have no choice but people power.”
Asked for clarification of Aquino’s position, his spokesperson Edwin Lacierda told the Inquirer by phone Sunday: “If it is clear that he lost because he was cheated, or through failure of elections, then that (people power) is an option that he will take.”
“If he lost in an honest, clean and orderly elections, then he will abide by the results,” Lacierda added.
‘Let’s use our head’
Rosales said that if there was a basis to call for people power, he was not averse to it, but he indicated that he saw no reason to call for any mass movement now.
He said the situation in 1986, when Filipinos turned out in massive numbers to oust Marcos, was different from the current situation.
“Why inject that, why infuse that into the present situation?” Rosales said.
“Remember, at that time there was a dictator and the dictator was there with no real credible election, only referendum, and it was (for) as long as 20 years. Good heavens. Do you repeat that? No, come on, let’s use our head. These are two different things.”
Rosales said that anybody in the place of the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, who called on Filipinos to support the military rebels against Marcos in 1986, would have to do what he did.
But Rosales said that at the time, there were “unimaginable things,” such as there having been no credible elections for 20 years.
“Come on, come on, that’s just crazy, crazy, crazy,” he said. “These are two different things. That’s why whoever said that, that’s a little different. Whoever said that, I have never heard him, but [that] kind of thinking is irresponsible thinking.”
‘No, for heaven’s sake’
Asked if he would call for people power if the elections would not be credible, Rosales said he would not since there were legal recourses that people could take.
“No. For heaven’s sake, there is the Constitution. All these are covered by provisions of the Constitution. If there are complaints, credible, you go to the Comelec, you go (to) Congress, because you still have that,” he said.
Rosales lamented that Filipinos were always in a hurry, which was why, he said, they had failed to develop into a better people and tended to call for people power easily.
“We are always in a hurry,” he said. “We forget to grow in citizenship and to develop a real credible nation. To reach a stage where we mature as a nation and also [as a] people will take time.” With a report from Philip Tubeza
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