Comelec orders bishop: Remove tarp or face raps

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — The Comelec Legal Department has ordered Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra to remove the tarpaulin bearing the “Team Buhay” and “Team Patay” list of senatorial candidates on the façade of the San Sebastian Cathedral, or he will face charges.

In response, the Bacolod Diocese has filed for a temporary restraining order (TRO) with the Supreme Court stopping the Comelec from implementing its order, which the church cited as “unconstitutional and void.”

Vicente Navarra, represented by lawyers Ralph Sarmiento, Raymundo Pandan and Mitchelle Abella, has filed an “urgent petition for certiorari and prohibition with application for preliminary injunction and TRO” against the Comelec and Bacolod election registrar Mavil Majarucon-Sia.

Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. had said Thursday that the Bacolod Diocese should take out the poster, which measures 6 feet by 10 feet, because it exceeded the allowable size for campaign materials at 2 feet by 3 feet. “If they don’t take it out, we will simply charge them…” he said.

Navarra however insisted that the diocese has not violated Comelec rules because the list was not meant as a campaign material, but an expression of standing up against the Reproductive Health (RH) Law. He said it will remain hanging there until May 13, election day, and other churches in Negros Occidental under the diocese.

“The Comelec order is unconstitutional, a violation of the principle of separation of Church and State, and of the freedom of expression,” Navarra argued.

The Diocese had initially bowed to the Comelec order to resize its tarpaulin, but it only cut the whole tarpaulin into two, but each part was still oversized.

Yesterday, the Diocese showed its defiance against the Comelec by pasting the two halves back, to put it back to its original size.

In the petition at the SC, Navarra said the Diocese also asked for nullification of the Comelec order, issued by Sia last Feb. 22, and the one issued by the Comelec Law Dept., through its head Esmeralda Amorada-Ladra, last Feb. 27 with the warning of election offense charges if the church fails to remove the tarpaulin.

Last Feb. 21, Navarra and the Bacolod Diocese put up two sets of tarps on the front wall of the cathedral, with the message enjoining the people to junk the RH Law and the names of senatorial bets who were pro-RH (Team Patay) and anti-RH (Team Buhay).

The bishop said he and the Diocese are neither candidates nor member of any political parties, and that the edifice where the tarps were displayed were owned by the church. He contended that it was the collective decision of the Diocese to post the tarps and hang red flags on the church’s premises until election day.

Abella said the campaign against RH law has been undertaken by the Church for more than two years now and their actions are “independent of any occasion, electoral or otherwise.”

Father Ireneo Gordoncillo, for his part, said, it is a prerogative of the Church to lead its followers whom to support and not to support based on certain issues that threaten life as a “primordial concern of the Church.”

Navarra said several bishops around the country have told him they will follow what he has done and come out with their own “Buhay/Patay” candidates. They are: Archdiocese of Lipa (Batangas)’ under Archbishop Ramon Arguelles; Diocese of Tarlac under Bishop Florentino Cinense; Diocese of Sorsogon under Bishop Arturo Bastes; and the Diocese of Borongan (Samar) under Bishop Crispin Varquez.

In an interview over Catholic Church-run Radio Veritas, Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said: “It is the right of the Diocese of Bacolod to (post tarpaulins) and it has been agreed that the Archdioceses of Lipa and Tarlac would do the same.”

Navarra insisted that the posting of the tarpaulin was not to spite anybody. “Passing the RH law is a clear defiance of God. I cannot stand that, and I have to tell the people about it… It is an infringement on life, and once you infringe on life, you infringe on all the other rights,” he said. “I am really enraged about the passing of the RH Law because it is an insult to God and I cannot swallow it. That’s why I encourage my priests to fight it,” he added. (FREEMAN)