Cotabato archbishop: 'Select a candidate who will be a just peacemaker'
May 3, 2016 | 3:12am
COTABATO CITY - Mindanao’s top Catholic parochial leader on Tuesday urged voters to only vote for candidates who respect the sanctity of life and are keen on helping address the decades-old Bangsamoro issue.
Orlando Cardinal Quevedo, current Archbishop of Cotabato, said people should vote for candidates with utmost fidelity to religions that espouse morality and teach the spiritual context of the value of life.
“Select a candidate who by belief and practice demonstrates support for the right to life,” Quevedo said in the pastoral communiqué “Circular Letter on the 2016 Elections” which his office dispatched to different parishes in Central Mindanao on Tuesday.
“You may have already chosen your candidates (but) let me stir your conscience. I do so in the light of the social situation in our country and our region,” Quevedo said.
He said the change Filipinos need now is a “radical” kind of change.
“I speak of a profound change in mind, behavior, and values. Sadly a candidate who promises change could have the same values and behavior that require change,” said Quevedo, who belongs to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) congregation.
He said voters should favor candidates who have moral integrity.
“Corruption is a plague in our country. Billions of pesos go into private pockets every year instead of being spent to uplift the poor. Select a candidate not tainted by corruption, unexplained wealth and properties and enrichment in office,” he said.
He said candidates must also be selected based on their commitment to defend the right to life as something so sacred.
“The right to life includes the right of the unborn, of the terminally ill, of innocent people, even of suspected or convicted criminals, of the old and the dying,” Quevedo said.
“Select a candidate who by belief and practice demonstrates support for the right to life,” Quevedo said in his circular, copies of which were released to reporters on Tuesday.
Quevedo’s congregation, the OMI, whose pontifical base is in Rome, is engaged in continuing missionary works for poor Muslim, Christian, and lumad folks in central Mindanao and in the island provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi since the 1930s.
He said while many candidates for local and national positions promise to work for peace, only a few understand the deeper intricacies and political ramifications of the Mindanao Moro problem.
“The phenomenal `minoritization’ of the Bangsamoro in the past 80 years in the land where they had once exercised self-determination and sovereignty is an undisputed historical record,” he said.
“Select a candidate who will be a just peacemaker,” he said.
Quevedo is so popular in Mindanao for his continuing, extensive support to peaceful efforts of addressing the Mindanao Moro issue.
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