Following article by Marie A. Surbano is from today’s issue of the Daily Tribune.

A bishop started the political-moral ball rolling as he flung the first challenge to the Philippine soldiery to defend the Constitution that he said is today under attack by the Arroyo government.

Novaliches Bishop Antonio Tobias, an outspoken senior bishop-critic of President Arroyo and her administration, yesterday openly called on the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to perform its bounden duty to defend the Constitution and protect the Filipino people from the machinations of Mrs. Arroyo and her allies in the House of Representatives in their multiple immoral plots to amend the Charter and thereby ensure that their selfish vested interests would be protected.

“The soldiers, the Armed Forces,replica shoes, are sworn to protect the people and to defend the Constitution,” the bishop said, justifying his call as legal and constitutional, stressing that “Today, the Constitution is being ravaged in the interest of private individuals. We should be dependent on this (constitutional duty of the AFP to correct this wrong) and I ask them (military) to help the people,” the Novaliches bishop told reporters during a press briefing yesterday after the Mass held at the St. Peter’s Parish in Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City.

Tobias, a known critic of the Arroyo government,Mulberry handbags, pointed out that the soldiers are constitutionally sworn to protect the Charter and therefore, as it is now under attack, they should now show that support to the mass actions being organized by no less than the majority of the Filipinos who oppose Charter change (Cha-cha).

It is the same constitutional proviso that then Vice President Arroyo and her elite group that grabbed power from then sitting President Joseph Estrada in January 2001, used to justify the military withdrawal of support by then AFP chief of staff ( Ret.) Gen. Angelo Reyes and his service commanders, which the Supreme Court, then headed by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., did not rule as unconstitutional, in legitimizing the Arroyo coup d’etat.

“I expect the soldiers to at least express support to the mass actions taking place now,” he said stressing that he is not urging them to be divided but to be united in defending the 19- year old Charter which congressional allies of the President want to dispose of, while ushering a new one that would effect a shift from the presidential system with a bicameral Congress to the parliamentary system with a unicameral congress through the railroading of the Constituent Assembly (Con-ass), as displayed by the House majority last week.

The bishop also voiced his disappointment with the manner by which the administration lawmakers are now pushing the Constitutional Convention (Con-con) which the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) had earlier declared to be the preferred mode of Charter change.

“I couldn’t believe that our congressmen would stoop to that level. I regard them highly because before I had relatives who were in Congress and they are really good persons,” Tobias said.

Tobias was also pointed to by a former Oakwood Mutiny core leader as having given the then rebel officer, Lt. Lawrence San Juan, who has since sworn allegiance to Mrs. Arroyo, safe haven by hiding him in several safehouses of the bishop.

Despite the sworn affidavit of San Juan pointing to Tobias as the bishop who had given him refuge, intimating that the bishop was part of the alleged coup d’etat then being allegedly planned by the rebel soldiers, the Department of Justice, however, never included him in the list of persons being charged for rebellion and coup d’etat.

The Novaliches bishop is convinced that the shift from Con-ass to Con-con is yet another ploy of the Arroyo government, and he appealed to the public to be more vigilant.

“Vigilance. This is what I am asking our people,” he stressed.

Tobias also rejects the claim that the President has nothing to do with the shift from the Con-ass to the Con-con,hermes handbags, saying: “Let’s put it this way, this is one means to shelter President Arroyo from the things that are happening. But it is she who started all this (Cha-cha moves), the reason we are divided and the reason there is infighting”.

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Click here for Inquirer’s story .

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