The CBCP in ‘blackmail’ mode

I HOPE that the rumor going the rounds about Commissioner Elias Yusoph of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is not true.

The rumor says that Yusoph, in charge of giving out exemptions to the gun ban, favors his relatives, friends, bodyguards of fellow Comelec commissioners and fellow Muslims.

Yusoph’s subservience to Malacañang showed when he issued a  gun exemption to the President without thinking twice.

The President doesn’t need to carry a gun because he is guarded by more than 2,000 elite soldiers from the Presidential Security Group (PSG) 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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Those who have applied for exemption to the gun ban, and whose request was turned down by Yusoph, should write a will stating that should they get killed, their bodies should be paraded outside the premises of the Comelec main office.

Yusoph should be able to make a distinction between those who need a gun because their lives are under threat, or those who just want to show it as a status symbol.

People whose lives are under threat who are not running for a political office or are not publicly supporting any candidate should be given an exemption.

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The country’s Catholic bishops have denounced political dynasties and vowed to support any move to put an end to them.  Isn’t this a bit too late?

The Cory Constitution passed in 1987 prohibits political dynasties.

However, Congress, which is composed of politicians who want to perpetuate themselves and their families in power, has not passed an enabling law.

The move of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is highly suspicious because Congress passed the controversial reproductive health bill which the President signed into law.

The CBCP was very much against the bill.

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If the CBCP was really against political dynasties, why didn’t it denounce it in the first free election during the term of President Cory?

Why did it take the bishops three decades to come out with their pastoral letter denouncing political dynasties?

The timing of the CBCP’s stand against political dynasties smacks of blackmail: If you do what we tell you to do, we will just keep quiet over your “sins.”

If you don’t obey us, we will denounce you.

This smacks of blackmail!

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Artist and tourist guide Carlos Celdran has been convicted by a Manila court for disrupting ecumenical rites at the Manila Cathedral in 2010.

Celdran was arrested for carrying a placard inside the church that said “Damaso,” in apparent reference to an abusive Spanish friar who was a fictional character,  in Jose Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere.”

The Catholic Church doesn’t brook criticism. It still has a medieval mindset.

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A press statement by the Archdiocese of Manila said it did not pursue the case against Celdran, in effect, saying he had been forgiven.

If this was so, the case against him should have been dropped.