DAGUPAN CITY–For Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, "it's time to go for the national leadership".

Perhaps, the time has come for the national leadership to become some kind of a hero instead of a downright villain, Cruz said in a statement yesterday.

By now, it should have learned the admittedly hard and painful lesson that it is neither truly meant to govern nor really capable of good governance, he added.

"The logical conclusion is but-one: it appears that the time has come for the national leadership to go, to renounce the office, to move somewhere, to leave everything behind," he said.

Cruz enumerated several reasons. He said for a start, it (national leadership) faces so many serious and standing socio-moral predicaments and political adversities.

He said it continues to be accused of lying, cheating and stealing, the long hanging threat of impeachment proceedings, the actual worsening economy notwithstanding all loud and repeated official protestations to the contrary, people’s hunger grows while their death for lack of medicine multiplies and there is not only less education available for the children but also less
educated youth.

He noted that there are its often failed attempts at having power more than that allowed by law. This is not to mention its fast becoming gun-powder mentality that translates into many and still continuing political killings and disappearances, he said. There are more and more rallies of dissent plus bigger and bigger marches of contempt and it has even become the target not only of creative jokes but also the object of sickening texts, he added.

Cruz also said its pretence at super regions is simply met with super typhoons. "Pure coincidence or actual design, there are one too many natural disasters coupled with many man-made calamities", he said.

Cruz also cited problems on illegal drugs, illegal gambling, graft and corruption that continue to hound the national leadership.

And there came the desperate government plan of changing the fundamental law of the land—for any and all conceivable reasons except the common welfare, he said. There must be another planet where those possessed and obsessed proponents of CHA-CHA (Charter Change) come from to preach that national abundance, progress and development are necessarily connected with a
parliamentary form of government!, he said.

But then as the infamous “people’s initiative” was unmasked and discarded, the insistent “constituent assembly” was all of a sudden set aside on account of wide and strong contrary public outcry, Cruz added.

In the same way, the much publicized ASEAN Summit was likewise suddenly cancelled allegedly for simple climatic reasons, he said.

"National leadership: time to go?," Cruz asked.