EDITORIAL - Oscar Cruz

Former Dagupan-Lingayen archbishop Oscar Cruz has a problem. He is too consistent. Even his dour unsmiling face never changes, making some people suspect he is constipated for life. For a man of the cloth, he seems to have dedicated himself to forever making enemies.

When Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was president, Cruz was her constant critic. The retired prelate never seemed to have a nice word to say about Arroyo. Everytime Arroyo saw his picture in the papers, she immediately knew the news was going to be bad.

But that was before. Arroyo has since slid to a more comfortable role as congresswoman. Now it is Noynoy Aquino who is beginning to feel the unrelenting heat, an unexpected twist for a man who must’ve developed the habit of nodding each time Cruz fell into some relentless harangue.

Noynoy must be having that sinking feeling that once Cruz is done with his subordinates, whom he has linked to jueteng payolas and God knows eventually what, the irrepressible ex-bishop will then take the next logical step, and that is to train his sights on the new president.

And to think his presidency is just beginning. With Arroyo, Cruz started attacking her at about the time the Garci scandal broke out, which was right after her six-year term started, the period prior to that having been the unfinished term of Joseph Estrada that she assumed.

That gives Noynoy about the same period of exposure to the crosshairs of Cruz as Arroyo, the only difference being that, in the case of Noynoy, Cruz started nibbling away at the people surrounding him, whereas with Arroyo, she was the immediate target from the very beginning.

Still it is no fun awaiting the inevitable. If the Arroyo experience is any indication, Noynoy knows that Cruz will sniff him out sooner than later. If Cruz started with his underlings, it is only because Noynoy himself is not involved in jueteng.

But even that is just a lucky stroke, considering that Cruz actually did not stop with just Noynoy’s men. Cruz, always the loose cannon, also fired broadsides at the Roman Catholic Church, some of whose dioceses he accused of also having taken jueteng money.

Noynoy used to believe everything Cruz said in attacking Arroyo. Now he is a stickler for evidence. And why did Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal have to answer Cruz? His telling the reporter of another paper that “we are not always in favor of gambling” is funny and pathetic.