Impeach backers eye countryside support
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Feeling abandoned by the bishops, impeachment complainants on Saturday said they have turned to the countryside in gathering support for their case against President Arroyo.
At the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo, actress Leah Navarro said the Black and White Movement and other groups are going around the country asking people to convince their congressmen to vote for the complaints.
The actress, a veteran of EDSA revolutions, said the groups decided to meet people in the grassroots because of fear that the new complaints might suffer the fate of last year's cases.
In September last year, the House of Representatives voted down the impeachment complaint filed by 51 opposition congressmen.
During the forum, Navarro and fellow complainant Vicky Avena, a University of the Philippines law professor, presented an open letter addressed to the bishops.
The letter was in response to the CBCP pastoral letter, which said the conference was not inclined to back the impeachment process as a way of ferreting out the truth on whether Mrs. Arroyo cheated in the May 2004 elections.
Avena said the bishops should have at least given their suggestion as to how to "seek the truth" about questions on the President's legitimacy.
Navarro, meanwhile, said that aside from "extra-constitutional means," which the anti-Arroyo groups do not support, they see no other way to seek the truth about allegations of graft, cheating and abuse of power against the President.
In their letter, the complainants said they think that the "[bishops] might just have been misled into understanding where we are now politically and constitutionally."
The complainants said the pastoral letter made them feel abandoned and more confused as to what steps they should take to seek the answers on the allegations against Mrs. Arroyo.
"Should we fail this time because we were abandoned, we pray that you, our dear bishops, might take us down from our Cross, anoint us with your precious oils and perhaps see us to that place where we may resurrect and again, despite being crucified, carry on and finish what we had started to do," they said in the letter.
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