Think about it
Bishop Cruz’s political savvy
By Jun Velasco
PANGASINAN newsmen who attended the recent kapihan of the newly baptized Engkwentro of the newly renamed Pangasinan Press Club (formerly Pangasinan Press and Radio Club) couldn’t shake off their admiration for Bishop Oscar Cruz.
The “encounter” took place at Lenox Hotel last Wednesday, but the smitten newsmen hadn’t shaken off their enjoyable show with the activist church leader in spite of dousing cold water nationwide anti-jueteng drive, is “losing the battle, in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.”
The church leader was with three other guests, Mayor Julier Resuello of San Carlos City, and two NBI-Pangasinan officials Roger Mamaoag and Dasve Alunan, who were quizzed on the missing P9 million last week.
The P9 million heist, reported by Mayor Ayuy as an insider’s failed job cooked up, he claims, by a trusted cashier and supposedly abetted by the city’s fund-keeper, made many newsmen local Sherlock Holmeses and sounded more like NBI agents than the two guests.
Disturbing were Bishop Cruz’s “exposes” about an ill-fated nation which couldn’t be whisked away from the incumbent power holder because, he said, everything in the government now is being used to keep it that way, however ugly and despicable it could be. His scenario fits that of Congressman Joe de Venecia’s scenario filled with forebodings about a dark future.
The Philippine scenario portrayed by Bishop Cruz: charter change will be rammed down the Filipinos’ throats, endorsed by a captive referendum en route to an automated election that would fail. Events will move too swiftly and confusingly and in the bedlam, martial law emerges.
We asked him although not in these words, “Will God allow this?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
And then someone asked, “Are you supporting the presidential bid of Governor Ed Panlilio?”
He boomed, “Of course not!”
And then another newsman was asking about his latest “ratings” of Gov. Espino, but the now disarming church official gave out a wide grin as if to caution the newsman against twisting his words so as not to put him on collision course with the guv’nor he esteems highly.
We have in Bishop Cruz an incisive commentator of events which lovers of democracy and the rule of law consider “Godsent.”
May his tribe increase.
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