By Batas Mauricio
HERE is a question by one of our readers here about the Reproductive Health Law, which is being debated on at the Supreme Court: are the proponents of this law aware that it will have the ultimate effect of reducing the number of Christians and increasing the population of other religious groups which even encourage polygamy, or the practice of having two to four wives simultaneously?
The reader argues: since the RH Law would enable men and women from the Christian religions to limit the number of their children using family planning or any anti-fertility drugs and instruments that are given away for free under its provisions, that would reduce all the more the already dwindling Christian population.
On the other hand, the same reader told me, the members of other spiritual groups who are not Christians but who are privileged enough to have more than one wife can still manage to have more children, even if they practice (assuming they will indeed practice) family planning and use anti-fertility drugs and gadgets under the RH Law.
These non-Christians will still have more children simply because they have more families, thereby enabling them to become more numerically dominant in the very near future, having the capacity to alter the Filipino nation’s religious affiliation and to decimate Christianity in the Philippines, our reader is saying. I wonder what RH Law proponents will say to this? Any comment, Sen. Pia Cayetano?
Yes, Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda, there are now more Filipinos who believe that corruption in the Philippines has gone down under President Aquino, but then, it is not really what the people believe in that matters on issues of corruption, but the continuing actuality and presence of graft in government, even now that the President is on his way out.
What is totally dismaying here is the fact that the present Aquino presidency was told, in more ways than one, that despite its sincere and honest intentions to eliminate graft and corruption, removing or reducing it will not be achieved by the sole spectacle of the President being honest or sincere. There must first be a corresponding transformation among the bureaucracy and among the people, which cannot be effected by mere slogans like “daang matuwid” (or “righteous path”).
In fact, the biggest challenge of any president who will serve the country for only a very brief period of six years is to discard grandiose illusions that he, by himself, can do something that will really benefit the nation as a whole, even if he happens to have come from so-called democracy icons, or from parents who are revered worldwide.
Even if he is the president who has the vast powers of the government at his beck and call, he cannot do anything that will push the country and its people towards success and progress, as President Aquino maybe painfully finding out now. Only God can do something, and the best legacy that any president can ever leave is to bring his people to a better understanding and familiarity of God so they can start being righteous and spiritually revived.
Any president of this country who is aware of the six-year limitation of his term must strive to follow the example of the greatest human king of all, King Solomon, to enable him to rule effectively and successfully. When asked by God as to what he wanted after having been installed as king of the Israelites even when he was yet a minor, Solomon did not ask for wealth and riches, nor for the death of his enemies, but for knowledge to rule. God gave it to him, allowing him to become a king like no other.
E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com, mmauriciojr111@ gmail.com