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.