Roxas scores
Never mind the Iglesia ni Cristo members who took over streets in Metro Manila protesting, as what their placards show, what they claim to be the interference by the state in their religion. They were merely told by their leaders to do so. And from what little that outsiders know of the INC, their members strictly follow any order of their leaders. Blind obedience seems to be as much a measure of faith as faith itself within the INC.
What is disappointing is the number of politicians, most of whom appear to be running for a variety of positions in 2016, swiftly taking up the INC argument as their own. Jejomar Binay, Grace Poe, Alan Peter Cayetano, Bongbong Marcos, Chiz Escudero. Even Rodrigo Duterte. All toed the INC line that a Department of Justice investigation of a complaint for kidnapping filed by a dismissed minister against top leaders of the sect was an interference in the religious freedoms of the INC.
One does not have to be a senator to have common sense. Even a grade school pupil can see that a charge for kidnapping is an allegation of a crime for which the government is obliged to investigate as part of its duty to instill social order and uphold the rule of law. Never is it an intrusion into the religious rights of anyone. But if that is what INC members are told by their leaders and they believe it, it is up to them for as long as they keep that belief to themselves. No problem.
The problem comes when senators and other public officials who are expected to know end even be experts in the law and to distinguish it clearly from religious rights suddenly and very quickly embrace as their own the arguments that INC leaders are telling their members. The suddenness and swiftness with which Binay, Poe, Cayetano, Marcos, Escudero, and Duterte took up the cudgels for the INC is disturbing and revealing.
And indeed it disturbs for what it reveals. it reveals the stuff of which these politicians are made. In the blink of an eye, they became even more INC than the INC itself. Again, it is difficult to blame the INC membership because they were merely toeing the line drawn for them by their leaders. If you and I were INC members, we would be out their in the streets too.
But we are not. And so are Binay, Poe, Cayetano, Marcos, Escudero and Duterte. Yet even more than us, as we are just ordinary folk, Binay, Poe, Cayetano, Marcos, Escudero and Duterte led everyone else into adopting the notion that an alleged crime cannot be investigated if it involved leaders of the INC, that doing so would be an interference in its religious freedoms, and that there are far more important matter to investigate than this one.
One is aghast at how sneaky these supposedly learned lawmakers and public officials, some of whom even proclaimed their own selves to be highly principled, can shape an argument to suit their particular position at a given time when their own interests so demand. How funny that one who would even drop everything else just to destroy a political rival would now be of the mind to pursue everything else, just do not touch this one.
One of the strengths of the INC is its ability to vote as one and it is clearly enjoying the fruits of this phenomenon in this case. Everytime an election looms in the horizon, politicians lose no time courting the INC in the hope of winning its support. With several millions of members who can be ordered to vote as one, it is no surprise politicians would do almost anything for the INC in exchange for its blessing.
And this is precisely what has happened to Binay, Poe, Cayetano, Marcos, Escudero and Duterte. To be assured of the INC's electoral backing is perhaps already a fifth of the way toward getting elected. To have that kind of advantage, one can surmise a politician would do almost anything, maybe even to the point of thickening up their faces.
Surprisingly, the one politician who could really have used the INC support, the one politician who has struggled mightily for years to make his stock fly -- Mar Roxas -- was the only one among the 2016 seekers who drew the line against the INC. In a bizzare twist of fate, the man almost everybody has dismissed as a winnable presidential candidate, was the very man who turned out to be the most presidential by putting his foot down on the matter of the law.
While Binay, Poe, Cayetano, Marcos, Escudero and Duterte, all eyeing either the presidency or the vice presidency in 2016, were for the government to pass up the INC case for being a supposedly internal affair, it was Roxas who correctly pointed out that an allegation of a crime is not a religious matter even if it may involve a religious person and must therefore be pursued. If in this case alone, Roxas really scored big.
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