January 22, 2025
Manila – The Church of Christ (INC) blew the trumpet, and nearly two million believers responded with their feet. On January 13, members flocked to Manila’s Quirino Grandstand in buses for the “National Peace Rally,” which was billed as a non-political rally for unity and forgiveness.
But that’s not the case.
Like moths to a flame, many politicians were in attendance, unable to resist the promise of blessing and potential support from one of America’s most influential Christian denominations in the months leading up to the May midterm elections. Naturally, the next day’s headlines trumpeted INC’s “show of force.”
However, no one with common sense could miss the real message of this rally: excuse wrongdoing, shirk responsibility, and protect the powerful.
At the center of INC’s “ethical appeal” is Vice President Sara Duterte, who is facing charges that she misused funds earmarked for the vice president’s office and the Department of Education until last July when she has been leading both departments. But rather than answer the accusations, the vice president opted for blanket denials and issued death threats to her opponents, including the president and his relatives. Three impeachment complaints have been filed seeking her removal from office, with a fourth still pending.
The Art of Bilingualism
In organizing the massive rally, the Congress party leadership’s rationale was a masterstroke in the art of doublet: The aim, the sect leader said, was to express their opposition to President Marcos in the wake of his acrimonious parting of ways with Duterte. Support for Duterte’s impeachment.
The sect has taken pains to use the words of the president himself to advance its cause. In December, Mr. Marcos said: “What will happen if someone brings impeachment? It will tie up the House, it will tie up the Senate. It will take up all our time, and why? Inaction, inaction. None of this will help improve anything. Filipino life. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a storm in a teacup.
INC spokesman Edwil Zabala said the INC rally was “basically to support the president’s own words.”
Meanwhile, Malacañang has no choice but to go along with the ruse. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said the president’s position has not changed and he does not support the move to expel his former UniTeam running mate.
“We see today’s rally as part of the national dialogue that we as a people should be engaging in in order to reach a clear consensus on the issues that face us all and affect our future,” Bersamin said.
exert political power
But Buckingham Palace’s official statement exposed the government’s misguided priorities and lack of direction. After all, the public demand for an end to funding irregularities faced by the country’s No. 2 official is not “clarity and consensus” but accountability.
The INC may have marketed its rally as a rally for national forgiveness, but it became clear that what it was really seeking was the forgiveness of one man – someone who might be politically useful when another election usher in a new government three years later.
The day after the INC rally, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said the massive rally would not affect the government’s investigation into Duterte. “We just have to look at the law as something that equals everything between us all and that’s why we can’t give people special favors because of their status,” he said, adding: “I’m not worried about that because it’s We respect their freedom to express themselves passionately.
But Remulla is naive to suggest that the rally was really just an exercise in free speech. Rather, it was an orchestrated show of political power designed to intimidate lawmakers and divert attention from serious corruption allegations.
Unchristian and unpatriotic
While the Attorney General’s assurances are welcome, his words alone are not enough. If the justice system is to maintain the trust of the people, it must be immune to such public displays of power. As Juan Ponce Enrile, the president’s legal adviser and former Senate President, noted, “If we follow the logic implicit in the Congress party rallies, a very harmful precedent will be set ”, that is, impeachment is more of a political expediency than a constitutional mechanism to remove erring officials.
Therefore, Duterte’s accountability for alleged violations must continue to be unimpeded, whether through the political channel of impeachment, or the judicial channel of the courts, or both.
Religious influence is irrelevant to this conversation, especially when the motivation is neither Christian nor patriotic—protecting public officials from scrutiny. Ultimately, the Congress’s call for peace rings hollow without an equal call for justice, for neither can exist without the other.
