After an eventful six weeks in California for my ordination and post-ordination invitations to four United Reformed congregations, I’m finally back in the Philippines. After a day’s rest, I flew to Singapore on an invitation to preach at a church that I had been in touch with since December 2007. I am very grateful for the hospitality and enthusiasm of our brethren in that place.

I’ll shortly resume my routine of teaching at a couple of seminaries, which starts sometime next week, and a midweek Bible study. I’m now also trying to gather a group of families for another Bible study group and possibly Sunday evening services. If you or others you know live in the following areas – Pasig, Cainta, Taytay, and Antipolo – and are interested, please let them know and invite them.

If you read the summary of the Watergate scandal, you would see many, many parallels to the current National Broadband scandal in the Philippines. The president, according to her own admission today, was told of bribes and anomalies even before she signed the deal in China. If she was the honest president she claims to be, she should have suspended the people involved, appointed a special prosecutor, and ordered a swift investigation of the affair. This should have led to indictments and prison sentences of those people. And why did it take her five months from the time she learned of the anomalies to cancel the deal? Why did she not appoint a special prosecutor or order a thorough investigation of the matter as soon as she learned of it?

Instead, this has become for her a case of “sin upon sin,” like King David trying to cover up his adultery with lies and murder. She might not be involved herself (hardly believable if her husband was involved), but isn’t knowingly covering up her cabinet members’ corruption illegal and punishable under Philippine law as “obstruction of justice” and “abuse of power”? It gives me the shudders when I read about this scandal, knowing the way the Watergate scandal unfolded and ended. In this case, there seems to be not one “smoking gun,” but several, including her own admission, and the testimonies of other government officials.

What should Filipinos do to right the situation? Flood the streets again to topple another abusive administration? Edsa 1, Edsa 2, Edsa 3 – when will it end? If they unseat Mrs. Arroyo in an Edsa 3, how soon would it take for Edsa 4 to unseat the next lameduck president? To break this cycle of unconstitutional removal of presidents, the rule of the Constitution, not the rule of the mob, should be allowed to take place. Because the Philippine government is largely patterned after that of the United States, it also takes a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to impeach and remove a president. It is very evident that even the American Congress votes along party lines, as in the case of President Clinton’s impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate. However, in Nixon’s case, six of the 17 Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee voted according to their conscience to impeach one of their own.

If Filipinos take the high road of Constitutional process in this scandal (Romans 13:1-7), the question then is this: Would the members of the House and Senate be honorable and just enough to vote for what is honorable and just? Or would these members of Congress, who are unfitly addressed as “Honorable,” vote as usual, i.e., according to their bank accounts? And if there is Constitutional removal from office, would corruption in high places stop? I doubt it. Not within this generation, or even the next, and the next… generation of Filipino politicians. Maybe a strongman in the mold of President Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore can break the vicious cycle of corruption in the Philippines. Now if only there exists such a Filipino…

I’m writing these thoughts as an outsider looking in, not to be on one side or the other, as I try to be as objective as my subjective mind allows. As I strongly believe in the spirituality of the church, these are my personal thoughts.