The Cebu Declaration

On October 1, 2014, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal led the signing of the Cebu Declaration. With him are the other pillars of the Roman Catholic Church including Archbishop Emeritus Fernado Capalla of Davao, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles of Lipa, Archbishop Romulo dela Cruz of Zamboanga and Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos of Butuan, as well the leaders of other religious faith. The gathering was inspired by the Lipa Declaration which was launched in Lipa City on August 27, 2014.

The Cebu Assembly proclaimed its support for the Lipa Declaration and proposed concrete and immediate steps to translate the desired objective of national transformation into a viable program of action.

The  Cebu Declaration noted with great pain that while the moral and spiritual crisis and its political and economic effects continued to deepen, the national political leadership consistently failed to show the will or the capacity to respond to these ills in any appreciable measure. Consistent with the Lipa Declaration and in the light of new issues which have since emerged—to which the incumbent administration has failed to adequately respond—the members of the Assembly called upon National Transformation Council to:

1)            Pursue all necessary and available lawful means to compel President Aquino to step down at the soonest possible time;

2)            Immediately organize the equivalent of a government in waiting, consisting of men and women of integrity and proven worth, in order to assure the nation and the international community that President Aquino’s removal and the prosecution and imprisonment of every culpable member of the government for corruption will not create a political vacuum;

3)            Initiate extensive consultation with the Islamic community in Southern Philippines to arrive at an authentic consensus on how to solve the long-festering multicultural problem in the area, free from any possible intervention by any foreign interest party, beginning with the countries in Southeast Asia, and including the new extremist entity called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” by those who control it;

4)            Cause the immediate filing of criminal cases against all the Senators and Congressmen, Members of the Cabinet, the Commission on Audit and the various government agencies involved in the misuse of the PDAF and the DAP from 2010 to date, and to sue whatever public pressure is necessary to make all those involved in these cases to immediately vacate their respective positions;

5)            Organize a panel of experts who will undertake a comprehensive study of the country’s energy problem and propose solutions that will be free of any political bias for or against any particular energy source, and take into primary consideration the interests of the general public and the consumers rather than the various actors in the generation, transmission and distribution chain;

6)            Organize public support for the PNP rank-and-file in their call for a th0rough cleanup of the PNP and an immediate change in its top leadership;

7)            Institutionalize a public forum, where aggrieved individual citizens could air their just grievances and mobilize public support for such grievances without being subjected to the arbitrary censorship imposed by government and the conscript press; and

8)             Actively support the call and effort of the concerned citizens of the country to establish a people’s Truth Commission to discover and reveal the accountability and any consequent liability of the administration of President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III arising from its massive misuse of the public funds through the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) that has been ruled unconstitutional by unanimous vote of the Supreme Court.

These steps must be undertaken immediately to stop the continuing decline of the present moral and political order. The intractability of the problems confronting the Philippines demands long term radical reforms which the National Transformation Council cannot undertake on its own. As it engages in the historic project of transforming the present dispensation into a modern, prosperous and equitable future for all Filipinos, it will need the continuing support of the citizenry. This is the defining call for every patriotic Filipino.

The Lipa Declaration

On August 27, 2014, people of different social and economic backgrounds and political persuasions and religious beliefs gathered in Lipa City to launch the National Transformation Council and sign the Lipa Declaration. Led by the pillars of the different faith communities in the country, the National Transformation Council and the delegates signed the Lipa Declaration.

The Lipa Declaration calls for genuine national transformation and the establishment of a transitional government that will spearhead the necessary fundamental changes in the existing political, economic and cultural systems in the Philippines.

It notes that a crisis of unprecedented proportions has befallen our nation as the life of the nation is in grave peril from the very political forces that are primarily ordained to protect, promote and advance its well-being, but which are aggressively undermining its moral, religious, social, cultural, constitutional and legal foundations. It decries the unbridled and unpunished corruption and widespread misuse of political and economic power in all layers of society which not only destroyed our common conception of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, legal and illegal, but also put our people, especially the poor, at the mercy of those who have the power to dictate the course and conduct of our development for their own selfish ends.

The Lipa Declaration calls for the resignation of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III who, far from preserving and defending the Constitution, as he swore to do when he assumed office, has subverted and violated it by corrupting the Congress, intimidating the Judiciary, taking over the treasury, manipulating the automated voting system, and perverting the constitutional impeachment process. It declares that he has lost the moral right to lead the nation, and has become a danger to the Philippine democratic and republican state and to the peace, freedom, security and moral and spiritual well-being of the Filipino people.

But instead of calling for a new election for the replacement of President Aquino after he stepped down prior to 2016, the Declaration calls for the restoration of our damaged political institutions to their original status and form before we begin to consider electing a new government under normal political conditions. It welcomes the National Transformation Council’s proposal to open broad public consultation on the need to modify and strengthen the presidential system or to shift from the unitary/presidential system to a federal/parliamentary form, endowing such structure with:

1)      A totally independent judicial department, free from any kind of intimidation or bullying by either the Executive or the Legislative Department, and with the sufficient wherewithal to clear the backlog of the courts and fast-track of all cases;

2)      A merit-driven, professional civil and military service;

3)      A totally transparent government budgeting, procurement, disbursement, accounting and auditing systems and procedures; and

4)      An irreproachably independent and completely dependable electoral system, free from the virus that has corrupted the automated voting system since 2010.

The Declaration strongly assails our failed electoral system and supports the Council’s position that until our electoral system is fraud-free, we should refrain from holding any farcical election. Insofar as the economy is concerned, the Declaration supports the proposal that with political reform, there must go hand and hand comprehensive economic reform consistent with the suggestion of Pope Francis that an economics of exclusion and inequality, coming from a misguided vision of the human being and of society harmfully acted upon through myopic laws, policies and programs should be rooted out.

The Lipa Declaration is a call for social and political revolution. And as the National Transformation Council prepares to embark upon the necessary reforms, the people supporting the Declaration call upon the Armed Forces of the Philippines, as the constitutional “protector of the people and the state,” to extend its protective shield to the Council, and not allow itself to be used in any manner to undermine the Council’s purely transitional and non-partisan role nor to allow any armed group to sow violence, disorder or discord into its peaceful ranks.

The Lipa Declaration is a revolutionary call whose time has come. VIVA LA REVOLUCION!