The much-talked-about “peace rallies” launched by the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) in its facile interpretation of “accountability,” “responsibility” and “rule of law” actually breaches the principle of the separation of church and state so beloved by politicians in their lousy rhetoric and violated each time they need the strange non-biblical “bloc voting” doctrine pursued by the INC’s Sanggunian. Just too much derp is invoked about voting as one but hardly is there any sense in historically voting for the worst politicians the republic has produced. They are the best argument for birth control.
On the face of it, the Jan. 13 rallies were supposed to be the INC’s response to the purported “destabilization” plot of those who logically think that Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio deserves impeachment for wasting at least P612.5-million of the people’s money at the Office of the Vice President (OVP), and spending P125-million in the final 11 days of 2022, believing wrongly that she was entitled to spend confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) that her budget was not entitled to. Sara could not produce a sliver of proof that the money was spent judiciously and did not go into her pocket. Doesn’t the INC teach each of its members to be honest, sincere and law-abiding? And that every single centavo of their church funds should be accounted for?
Sara also mismanaged billions of pesos appropriated for the Department of Education (DepEd), from which resigned as secretary posthaste as she was being investigated for bribery of DepEd officials, the mismanagement of funds, and the failure to push the computerization program of DepEd. Then, there is the matter of the plagiarized picture book published in her name and for which taxpayer money was spent. Of course, the reward money paid to creatures bearing snack brand names that ran into scores of million pesos should be called by its name—a scam—along with the bogus sponsorship of “youth leadership summits” that the Philippine Army (PA) subsidized.
Surely, INC ministers must be condemning these unholy practices but what do we have: The INC talking about peace and nothing about justice for taxpayers, and zilch about holding Sara’s feet to the fire. In other words, the INC is giving Sara a pass while riding on the willy-nilly declaration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that the country would not benefit from Sara’s impeachment. Both Marcos Jr. and the INC are tone-deaf. Tagging those who favor impeachment as agents of destabilization is an act that no self-respecting minister of the faith should do. It is like putting the cart before the horse. Sara’s actions actually destabilized Team Unity, and reinforced the people’s belief that the Marcos Jr.-Duterte alliance was nothing but a coalition built on corruption, graft, and plunder of the national wealth.
The INC “peace rallies” were supposed to be non-political. But since when has the INC been non-political? Yet, the INC Sanggunian a most political organization, particularly when it organized rallies when it was being rent asunder by internal dispute, not over scriptural debates but over control of the church hierarchy that led to the ouster of Executive Minister Eduardo V. Manalo’s own mother, sister and brother. Another example of a “non-political” mass rally in support of a beleaguered politician was held in 2000, when multitudes of El Shaddai members converged to support Joseph Estrada, who was impeached, not convicted, but was ousted from power in EDSA 2.
The brutal truth is that the INC, El Shaddai, Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC), and others have been endorsing candidates left and right in the not-so-political exercise of their religious doctrines. They all hide behind their religious beliefs to win special treatment, ranging from getting their members named as police chiefs in Quezon City, having their members promoted in the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the military, and winning government contracts from the printing of government ID cards, to drivers’ licenses and license plates for land vehicles. A former Manila mayor used to regale his breakfast club buddies about how one big bloc voting sect tells him, after every election that their members voted for him, an act that earns a quizzical look. He was never endorsed by that church in his entire political career.
The religious and quasi-religious organizations can hardly be barred from exercising their bloc-voting shtick every three years for that would run counter to constitutional provision about respect for the freedom of religion, even as the state continues to maintain a visceral hatred for progressive ideas and the right of people, from the poorest to the scandalously wealthy, to organize themselves and seek redress of grievances, which is exactly at the very heart of the impeachment complaint against Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, and the very core of protests against the incompetence, indolence and corruption of the Marcos Jr. regime, as exemplified by the graft-ridden and approved 2025 national budget.
Now, observers are saying that the INC “peace rallies” killed the Sara impeachment move. They did, only if birds suddenly grow teeth, fish climb trees, leopards lose their spots and tigers shed their stripes. It is like giving the INC an outsized influence on the bigger social reality. The fact is that the Marcoses and Dutertes are cannibalizing themselves even as each of them maintains that they can defeat the other. This is actually a war that pits the Filipino people against the most reactionary factions of the ruling class against each other, with the INC siding with Sara (a frequent visitor of the INC Central Church in Quezon), whose grandparents are supposed to be Ashkenazi Jews. The INC cannot be a non-partisan entity in a partisan war.
