Fr. Robert Reyes —JOAN BONDOC/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Only days before elections, a religious group made up of over a thousand Catholic Church leaders called on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to ensure “clean and honest” elections.
The priests belonging to the Clergy for the Moral Choice (CMC) on Wednesday marched to the Palacio del Gobernador and celebrated Mass in front of the Comelec headquarters to demand that the poll body carry out a “clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful” elections.
It warned the poll body that “God is watching you” and so are the Filipino people.
“Let us not be distracted. We have to campaign hard for moral choices. I also encourage you to fix our gaze on the Comelec because they need to be reminded to do their constitutional and sacred mandate to preserve the integrity of elections by counting the votes with objectivity, transparency and fairness,” said “running priest” Fr. Robert Reyes of the CMC.
The CMC, a group composed of about 1,400 Catholic bishops, priests and deacons launched in April this year, voiced their support for presidential bet Vice President Leni Robredo and her running mate, Sen. Francis Pangilinan, in a move designed to revive the Church’s active involvement in the elections after years of “moral relaxation.”
In endorsing Robredo and Pangilinan, Reyes said the CMC had an “examination of conscience” even as he recalled a time when the Catholic Church, under Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, was “never ambivalent to fight evil.” Sin was a leading figure in the Edsa People Power Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
“We have so much to repair because, through the years, we have become lax. We have given up our prophetic voice. We have seen what is evil and we hesitated and we became ambivalent about responding against evil,” said Reyes.
In a statement read, the CMC emphasized how “crucial” this year’s polls is as Catholic leaders could not afford to stay silent on the false and misleading information being spread, specifically on how some Filipinos are being conditioned on social media to believe that the martial law period was the country’s “golden years.”
The group said disinformation was being peddled on social media “with the help of paid trolls that are equipped by the candidates to bring down the truth until they are placed in seats of power.”
Fr. Romy Rañada, without naming Robredo’s main rival Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said that one of the presidential aspirants “represents the old discredited regime” as he is the son of the late dictator responsible for the human rights violations and abuses during martial law.
“For us, it is dangerous if a candidate like that wins,” Rañada told reporters.
READ: Bayan lauds Robredo’s COVID response plan as solid recovery strategy