2007 elections will be held – Cruz
DAGUPAN CITY– If you want the elections to be held next year as scheduled but seriously doubt it, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz is confident there will be no postponement.
Cruz, former president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said he based his confidence on the recent resurgence of jueteng, the staging of series of bank robberies and kidnapping nationwide.
“This is not to mention the bloody intramurals among seasoned politicians that already began with the recent blasting of the vehicle of a provincial governor,” the archbishop said in a statement last week.
In addition, he described the “People’s Initiative” as an exercise in futility and the Constitutional Assembly as a “pie-in-the-sky”.
The charter change desired and designed by the present administration will not happen as scheduled, he said.
“Those who are salivating to have a free ride for a longer tenure of their respective public office will ultimately have dry mouths,” he said.
However, while he believes the 2007 Elections will take place as provided by the Constitution, Cruz said “this political exercise would only matter if the Commission on Elections were made acceptable, credible and accountable”.
He predicts that if the elections are not clean and credible, the country will continue “to wallow in even more serious and pervasive doubt, dissent and division efficiently caused by the 2004 elections, he said.
Cruz said that true democracy and honest elections are inseparable realities, adding that one without the other is a farce. “The strength of the former is buttressed by the integrity of the latter. The falsity of elections guarantees the instability of democracy. This is a living truth especially in the country,” he said.
It is a blatant contradiction when after the elections, some of those proclaimed as winners are precisely the losers, he said. – EVA
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