If one wanted to see the fusion of politics and faith, of nationalism and religious identity, one could scarcely ask for a better example than the events of the past three weeks here in Manila: mass rallies, shrill calls for the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her cabinet, and demands for truth and accountability from the Catholic Church.
At the eye of the gathering storm is Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, Jr., a middle-aged engineer and former CEO of the government-run Philippine Forest Corporation, who will testify before the Senate on a corrupt $329 million contract between the government and Chinese telecom firm ZTE for a national broadband network. He also happens to be the unlikely figurehead for a nascent popular movement to oust President Arroyo.
Lozada, who was a consultant to the project, has implicated a handful of high-ranking government officials in sealing the contract without public bidding, bribing officials to allow the contract to go through, intimidating competing bidders and seeking to cover up their involvement once the scandal was exposed. One official, the former chairman of the Elections Commission, stands accused of demanding a whopping $130 million in kickbacks from ZTE to broker the deal. While the Philippines is no stranger to corruption, graft, or pork-barrel politics, the present scandal has outraged the country in a way that previous ones have not. Among the factors taking credit for this are the brazen nature of the alleged crime due to the sheer number of top officials implicated and the fact that it comes on the heels of the 2005 “Hello Garcia” scandal in which President Arroyo was accused of rigging the presidential election in her favor, leading to a failed impeachment attempt by the Congress.
President Arroyo and her associates in Malacañang, the presidential palace, have also provoked popular anger because of what many perceive to be their brazen stonewalling tactics, especially Executive Order 464, which prohibits any cabinet officials from testifying before the Senate without the president’s permission.
The case took a dramatic turn in early February when the Senate could not locate Lozada, who was due to begin giving his testimony. A few days later, Lozada resurfaced at De La Salle University in Manila, a Catholic university, where he invoked the ancient custom of sanctuary. Lozada’s explanation was bizarre; he claimed to have been sent to Hong Kong by his boss, Environmental Secretary and former Manila mayor Joselito “Lito” Atienza to avoid having to testify. Atienza changed his mind, however, and told Lozada to return, whereupon Lozada was snatched from the airport by unidentified men whom he later accused of working for Atienza. The men allegedly drove Lozada out of the city, causing him to fear for his life, and he claimed that it was only the media coverage that persuaded his captors to bring him to De La Salle.
The transformation of Jun Lozada from accomplice to whistleblower and hero of the people is both remarkable and a testament to the power of the press and the Catholic Church. Despite the fact that Lozada has admitted to engaging in corrupt practices during his tenure as CEO of the Philippine Forest Company, he has found a public eager to overlook those sins and portray him as a courageous David standing up to the Goliath of an increasingly illegitimate administration. The Catholic Church has thrown its support behind Lozada and has urged the Arroyo administration to be more forthcoming with the Senate. At a special Mass held for Lozada on February 17 and attended by some five thousand people at De La Salle University, Lozada was flanked by Catholic bishops and priests on stage along with former president Corazon Aquino, all of whom expressed their praise for, and support of, Lozada and asked the congregation to pray for him.
On February 18, Ateneo de Manila, my host university and a Jesuit institution, held a special “Truth and Accountability Mass” in recognition of the recent events. The Mass took place at the Church of the Gesu, a soaring modernist chapel with sharp triangular lines suggesting the Trinity. Former President Corazon Aquino was in attendance and at least two bishops were present, along with some twenty priests and a roughly equal number of religious brothers and sisters. Several hundred people packed the pews and dozens more squeezed into the space in the back of the church, with news crews roving the aisles. Before the opening procession, the emcee led us in the Angelus prayer. The Mass then opened with a mournful-sounding dirge in Tagalog, “Buksan Ang Aming Puso” (“Open Our Hearts”).
The readings for the Mass centered on the theme of justice and obedience to God. The first reading, from the Book of Daniel, lamented how people had turned from God and embraced evil, forsaking the prophets. “We have not obeyed your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and all the people of the land. O Lord, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you.” The Gospel reading from Luke drew upon the Sermon on the Plain, in which Jesus exhorts his disciples to “stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”
The second flier, which was read by a Jesuit priest, was a statement by the Jesuit organization calling on the President to lift the executive order preventing cabinet members from testifying before the Senate, calling on witnesses to make full disclosures to the public and urging the Senate to call for an independent counsel to investigate the scandal. To wild applause, the statement went on to say that, “We believe that if Mrs. Arroyo fails to act on the above, she risks the irredeemable peril of her already worn-out credibility and moral authority, and will consequently lose the little remaining hold to a legitimate Presidency.”
At the end of the Mass, one of the priests announced to loud cheers that Jun Lozada himself would be joining us in about a half hour. In the meantime, the congregation filed out to Katipunan Avenue, the busy thoroughfare just outside the Ateneo campus. There, about 200 people held a short candlelight vigil with signs urging rush-hour drivers to honk in support of Lozada. The response was deafeningly affirmative. About 20 minutes later, we began to head back to the Church of the Gesu, which rapidly filled back up to capacity. When Jun Lozada’s presence was announced, a great cheer swelled up from the congregation.
Lozada got up to the podium and the congregation rose to its feet. Soft spoken and dressed in a short-sleeved white button-down shirt, he surveyed the crowd. He spoke of being constantly harassed by government agents, of friends and family being interrogated, and of being forced to stay in different places to protect his life and that of his family. Lozada recounted the story of being asked by his young son about why they were “on the run,” if they were doing good. “Is this the kind of Filipino Christian society we want [our children] to inherit from us?” he asked the crowd, which roared in disapproval. He explained why he was testifying before the Senate. “We are all hoping for a good and dignified and bright future, but this bright and dignified future will not come if we will not take any action. If we let all the other people do it for us, it will not happen.” Drawing from the store of patriotic images, he spoke first of his love for Jose Rizal, considered to be the father of Filipino nationalism. He also spoke of being particularly inspired by Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on Catholic social teaching, and how it inspired him to contribute selflessly as a government worker. “I am a sinner,” he said. “I am struggling to be a good Christian. I did not do it for public adulation. I really did not expect anything in return. I did what I did to save my soul.”
After Lozada’s speech, Father Catalino Arevelo, a Jesuit theologian, stood up and encouraged people to contribute to a legal defense fund to aid Lozada in the barrage of libel lawsuits being filed against him by the people he has implicated. He then asked the crowd to pray for Lozada and his family. Father Arevelo invoked the memory of the 1986 revolution and compared Lozada’s willingness to stand up for the truth to the actions of “EDSA heroes” like Corazon Aquino and the late Jaime Cardinal Sin. With the whole congregation raising their right hands in blessing, Father Arevelo prayed that Lozada would have the strength and the courage to “bear witness to the truth.” Afterward, with upraised fists, the congregation broke into singing “Bayan Ko” (“My Country”), the unofficial national anthem originally written in 1929 as a protest against American occupation and featured prominently in national revolutionary movements ever since, including the EDSA revolutions.
As a social scientist witnessing this page in Philippine history unfold before me, I could not help but notice several things: first, it was clear that although the rally was scheduled at short notice, it was very orderly and well coordinated. Ateneo de Manila, it should be noted, is one of the country’s elite universities and occupies an affluent section of Quezon City. This was no street rally of the economically impoverished.
Second, the power of the Church was on full display. In the Philippines the Church’s integral relationship with society, its widespread infrastructure and its historic role as a moral guardian and social movement leader mean that it can intervene in political affairs. In a country where over 80 percent of the population is Catholic, the Church has access to an enormous reserve of human resources and has not hesitated to use it to influence elections. Additionally, as tonight’s Mass demonstrated, the Church can quickly mobilize people to make a show of support for its views.
Third, the rally illustrated the rich set of shared images and ideas that different actors can draw from to evoke a sense of nationalism. The Mass itself provided a focal point for protesters, with its rituals of prayer, scriptural reading and the sacrament of communion. The invocation of the “EDSA heroes” and the “People Power” revolutions of 1986 and 2001 helped to link the current movement to past political revolutions and activate cultural scripts of belief and behavior.
Other scripted rituals like the singing of protest songs (like “Bayan Ko”), raising one’s right fist, the invocation of national hero Jose Rizal, the holding of candlelight vigils, and even Lozada’s reference to a Filipino Christian culture help to reinforce the “imagined community” and link it across time and space to the Filipino diaspora and to previous generations of Filipino activists. Whether the scripts will extend to more direct action against the Arroyo administration remains to be seen.
New symbols were created as well. The Church’s blessing and praise of Lozada, coming in the midst of (rather than after) his Senate testimony, is a thinly veiled declaration of his credibility as a witness, despite the lack of concrete evidence to corroborate his testimony.
In some ways, this whole matter has less to do with Lozada himself than it does with his role as a convenient rallying symbol for a populace that has grown increasingly impatient with the Arroyo administration and disillusioned with the failure of the 2001 EDSA II revolution (which ousted President Joseph Estrada on charges of corruption). In this case the “People Power” scripts are helping to transform a legal issue (whether Lozada’s testimony is credible or not) into a political one. To be fair, the issue was politicized from the beginning. But, while there is no doubt that the Arroyos and their allies have engaged in some truly egregious abuses of their political power, it is also necessary to consider whether ousting them is worth undermining democratic institutions and promoting a norm of extralegal political succession.
During an emergency meeting on February 25, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines issued a statement in which they condemned “the continuing culture of corruption from the top to the bottom of our social and political ladder.” Still, they emphasized their role as pastors, not politicians, and refrained from calling for Arroyo’s ouster, urging her instead to “take the lead in combating corruption wherever it is found.” For the time being, though some clergy have taken stronger positions independently, the CBCP seems determined to give the democratic institutions, flawed as they may be, a chance to work.