A MANUFACTURED scandal.
What happens when a seemingly innocuous portion of a routine report by state auditors is blown out of proportion by public officials, media outfits, and self-styled crusaders whose common denominator is contempt for Church leaders and what they stand for?
The scorn heaped at seven bishops, who got donations from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) two years ago for the purchase of vehicles, it turns out, was largely undeserved.
The so-called “Pajero 7” expose stemmed from a single line in the 2009 PCSO Annual Audit Report released earlier this year: “[F]ive vehicles costing P6.940 million granted to Catholic church archdioceses were charged to the Charity fund, contrary to Article VI, Section 29 (2) of the 1987 Philippine Constitution …”
What followed was a media frenzy that exposed the press’ tendency to rush to judgements and sweeping generalizations without a careful assessment of the facts.
The “scandal” began with reports on the Philippine Daily Inquirer last June 28, about the latest string of anomalies uncovered by Aquino officials out to jail former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The banner story on P4 billion in debts left by the previous PCSO management had a sidebar that stated the PCSO was “verifying reports that former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo used its funds to get the support of a number of bishops and divide the Catholic Church. PCSO Chair Margarita Juico said Arroyo, now a Pampanga representative, had allegedly given six or seven Mitsubishi Pajeros to bishops a few months before she stepped down from office last year.”
The following day, the influential, pro-Aquino paper coined the name “Pajero 7” in a story headlined: “Bishop Cruz tells ‘Pajero 7’: Confess,” quoting the retired, outspoken Archbishop Oscar Cruz. Other newspapers, broadcast outfits, and online news websites picked it up. Critics of the Church’s uncompromising stance on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill quickly pounced on the brewing scandal and declared the Church hierarchy lacking in moral authority.
It took two weeks to clarify the matter in a Senate investigation that ended up absolving the bishops and berating the PCSO. There were no Pajeros—most of the donations were utility vehicles used by the Church’s social action centers in some of the country’s poorest provinces to deliver relief goods and medicines during calamities, transport the sick and victims of abuse, and conduct medical missions. One of the vehicles was actually a second-hand, decade-old pickup truck that cost no more than P280,000.
Former senator Francisco Tatad called the bungled expose a “slander,” and took the media to task.
“Juico, to whom the phrase ‘Pajero bishops’ had been attributed, said she had tried to correct the error in several interviews. But she gave no proof of her alleged effort, and the slander was never withdrawn. The media never bothered to verify, and have not said sorry for their irresponsible and harmful conduct,” Tatad said in an article on the news website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) titled, “Attack on the bishops backfires.”
The seven bishops – Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, Zamboanga Archbishop Romulo Valles, Nueva Segovia Archbishop Ernesto Antolin Salgado, Abra Bishop Leonardo Jaucian, Basilan Bishop Martin Jumoad, Bontoc-Lagawe Bishop Rodolfo Beltran, and Butuan Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos, returned the vehicles to the PCSO and announced the move during the Senate probe last July 13.
Two days earlier, the CBCP issued a pastoral statement expressing “deep sorrow” over the pain caused by the PCSO revelation, pulling the rug from under the Church’s relentless critics: “We assure you that the bishops concerned are ready to accept responsibility for their action and to face the consequences if it would be proven unlawful, anomalous, and unconstitutional.”
“We assure you that their action was done without malice. Out of their sincere desire to help their people, they failed to consider the pitfalls to which these grants could possibly lead them. They have also expressed their readiness to do everything that is necessary to heal this wound so that we can all move forward in hope,” said the statement signed by Tandag Bishop Nereo Odchimar, CBCP president, following the bishops’ twice-yearly meeting in Tagaytay.
‘We abhor it’
Malacañang’s spokesman promptly dismissed the Senate exoneration as a trifle. But for the CBCP, it mattered that the vehicles were not Pajeros—vehicles widely associated with comfort and luxury and with the dirty politicians who used them.
“There was never a Pajero. Don’t use the term ‘Pajero 7’ because we abhor it,” said Msgr. Juanito Figura, secretary general of the CBCP, in an interview.
The vehicles that were donated to the bishops were a 10-year-old Nissan Pathfinder pickup, two Mitsubishi Strada pickups, two Toyota Grandia Hi-Ace vans, a Mitsubishi Montero 4×4, and an Isuzu Crosswind. Four-wheel drive or 4×4 utility vehicles were particularly needed as the provinces under the seven dioceses cover hard-to-reach areas with poor infrastructure and road systems.
Pueblos, the bishop of Butuan, was particularly singled out after the publication of his February 2009 letter to then president Arroyo, asking for a Montero as a “birthday gift.” But what was not pointed out was that the two had a close working relationship, and that Pueblos had been named to two government bodies – the Caraga region’s peace and order council and a commission tasked to dismantle private armies.
The Aquino administration had an axe to grind—in June, Pueblos was reported as having sought President Aquino’s resignation amid criticisms the Chief Executive has been packing government posts with friends and classmates. At the Senate hearing, however, Pueblos clarified that what he meant to say was that Aquino should quit if unable to govern effectively.
At any rate, the vehicles were used in areas where government services are hardly available, with help extended even to non-Catholics.
“Those vehicles were not used to serve Catholics exclusively but all people, especially Filipinos in need,” Figura told the Varsitarian.
PCSO’s fault
But was it wrong to solicit aid from the government?
For Faculty of Civil Law Dean Nilo Divina, the bishops’ request for donations was neither immoral nor illegal because they were done “with good intention.”
“It’s charity, there’s nothing unconstitutional about it, and it does not violate the principle of separation of church and state,” he said. “Given the purpose and the objective [of serving the Filipino people] … it’s completely logical and reasonable.”
The oft-cited constitutional provision is as follows: “No public money or property shall be appropriated, applied, paid, or employed, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, sectarian institution, or system of religion, or of any priest, preacher, minister, other religious teacher, or dignitary as such, except when such priest, preacher, minister, or dignitary is assigned to the armed forces, or to any penal institution, or government orphanage or leprosarium.”
If there’s anyone at fault here, it’s the PCSO, said Tatad.
“Now, PCSO is a charity organization. Its mandate is to ‘provide funds for health programs, medical assistance and services, and charities of national character.’ Every diocese on the other hand has a social action or charity program. This requires the bishop to provide the funds and all other means to carry out charity work to the farthest ends of his diocese. This was confirmed by each of the seven bishops,” he said in his CBCP News article.
“As no religious test is associated with any PCSO donation, no bishop, priest or imam is barred from seeking such assistance. And they do. Does that offend the separation of Church and State? Jurisprudence says it does not,” the former senator added.
Juico admitted in an interview that the “problem is not with the bishops” but in the PCSO’s “system.”
“The PCSO board and officials must know what they have to give, how much they have to give, to whom they will give, and what are the parameters in the donation,” she said. “If there’s somebody from PCSO who indiscriminately gives what they are not supposed to give, then we get into trouble.”
Figura said the bishops did not want to wait for the findings of the Senate investigation before deciding to return the vehicles.
“It was a popular decision to keep the vehicles. A lot of senators even asked the bishops to reconsider their decision to return them. Just the same, however, the bishops decided to return it long before a decision on [the donations’] constitutionality and legality,” he said.
Teach the bishops a lesson?
Tatad sees a confluence of vested interests ready to jump at any opportunity to discredit the Church and undermine its campaign against the Reproductive Health bill, which seeks to establish a taxpayer-funded, multi-billion-peso birth control program.
“A usually reliable newspaper source has disclosed that Juico had dinner with the editorial staff of one anti-Church newspaper a week or so before the propaganda attack on the bishops started. They reportedly agreed ‘to teach the bishops a lesson’ for campaigning vehemently against the reproductive health (RH) bill, which the newspaper, Juico, her bosses and a well-funded foreign lobby are vigorously trying to push through Congress,” he said.
“They wanted to stop the switch of support from the pro-RH and ‘undecided’ camps to the anti-RH camp by bringing down the moral standing of the bishops, the source said. Not long after the dinner, the newspaper began running editorially slanted ‘news stories’ under big headlines about the ‘Pajero bishops.’”
Extra careful
The next CBCP president, Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, said Church leaders would be “extra careful” in soliciting help from government agencies from now own, knowing that these could be used against them by politically motivated quarters later on.
“There was nothing anomalous and illegal with [the donations], but just the same we will be discerning. Even if there was no malice in what we did, if it causes certain scandal, we know that we should be extra careful so that such [things] would be avoided,” Palma told the Varsitarian.
The prelate said the public should understand the bishops’ role in attending to the needs of their flock.
“The bishops have been very honest in saying that when we did that, it was because we were concerned with the people,” he said. Nigel Bryant B. Evangelista, Marnee A. Gamboa, Lorenzo Luigi T. Gayya, and Gervie Kay S. Estella
