(Updated 13 Dec)

Natawa ako sa announcement ng INC agreeing with PBBM that the impeachment of VPSara is not a good idea, na siyempre ay ikinatuwa rin ng Duterte camp. It was like hitting two birds with one stone, like pamamangka sa dalawang ilog a la Sen. Imee.

Ayon sa census ng Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) noong 2020:

Of the 108,667,043 household population, nearly four fifths or 85,645,362 persons (78.8%) reported Roman Catholic as their religious affiliation. It was followed by Islam with 6,981,710 persons (6.4%), and Iglesia ni Cristo with 2,806,524 persons (2.6%). In 2015, these were also the top three religious affiliations in the country. https://psa.gov.ph/

INC is only the third largest religious community but unlike the Catholics and Muslims, INC practices bloc voting come elections, kaya naman masugid na liniligawan at sinusuportahan ng mga pulitiko.

Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) exercises a more extensive hold upon its 2.8 million followers. It tells them how to vote in every election and how to support or oppose specific laws and policies of the government. Members who fail to fall in line are sanctioned and, in the most serious cases, lose their membership.  https://www.manilatimes.net/

But history tells us that INC members are not always compliant, as In 1986.

… it was the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, who catapulted the INC, a minority church, to a position of parity with the dominant Catholic and the various Protestant churches. The Marcoses paid periodic visits to the INC headquarters in Diliman, Quezon City and were regular well-wishers at Erdie‘s birthday celebrations. It was also during the Marcos era that the Iglesia achieved phenomenal expansion.

The church stood by Marcos unto his twilight days. It directed members to vote for him in the 1986 elections and came close to seriously dividing its flock. Many members voted for Corazon Aquino, the Catholic Church‘s anointed. This prompted INC ministers to conduct a house-to-house visit of members to compel confessions of whom they voted.

“We did not want to complicate one error (voting for Aquino) with another, which is to lie about our vote,” an Iglesia member of over 20 years recalled. INC rules say that those who disobeyed the order should be expelled. But “they couldn’t do that because many voted for Cory,” said the INC member. “That would be a whole, big flock out of the church if you decide to excommunicate.”

Instead, church ministers asked errant members to write letters of apology to the church. https://web.archive.org/

In 1992 the INC endorsed Danding Cojuangco but he lost, came out 3rd of 7, bested by FVR and Miriam. But maybe only because Imelda ran, too, and came out 5th (besting Salonga and Laurel) which divided the Marcos vote and probably the INC vote?

In 1998 the INC endorsed winner Joseph Estrada but who was ousted in Edsa Dos in January 2001. April 25 to May 1, INC members gathered to protest Erap’s arrest for plunder and graft in what came to be known as Edsa Tres or Edsa Masa. Read “Church at the Crossroads” by PCIJ’s Malou Mangahas a year after.

A YEAR ago today, hundreds of thousands of poor Filipinos loyal to ousted President Joseph Estrada mounted a six-day vigil at the EDSA shrine.

Police officials say that most of the protesters—three in every four—were members of the pro-Estrada Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), a secretive, tightly organized church composed mainly of poor members.

… On May Day Eve last year, some 150,000 Estrada loyalists, many of them INC members, marched toward Malacañang Palace, rammed through police barricades en route, and for 12 hours, braved gunfire and truncheons with sticks, stones, and pure rage.

Hours before the rampage, Arroyo had appealed to INC leaders, who ordered their members to pull out of Edsa and return home. Many stayed, anyway. When the melee was over, four protesters were killed, three of them members of the INC; 113 were injured, including many church members.

Rigoberto Tiglao, who had just been named press secretary that week, recalled that Palace officials were surprised to learn that of the scores arrested, two-thirds were INC devotees. Said a Cabinet member who was privy to Arroyo’s negotiations with church leaders, “Walang isang salita ang Iglesia.(The church speaks with a forked tongue.) ”

… True, the INC is still bristling that Estrada, whom it supported in the 1998 and previous elections, had been ousted from office. “Minsan lang nanalo yung presidente namin, tinanggal pa nila (They ousted the only president who was supported by our church),” says an Iglesia member.
https://web.archive.org/

In the next four presidential elections, INC endorsed winners Arroyo, PNoy, Digong, and BBM-Sara. Which may be the basis of the propaganda that the Iglesia bloc vote determines winners, even if it is said to amount to just over a million votes. And even if it hasn’t quite worked for VPs — INC endorsed Mar in 2010 but he lost to Binay, and BBM in 2016 but he lost to Robredo.

In fact, it is a myth that INC’s endorsement guarantees a win.  INC usually chooses and announces its “annointed ones” about a week before election day, pag consistent at malinaw na sa opinion polls kung sino-sino ang most likely winners. Read Oscar P. Lagman‘s “The INC endorsement myth”

In 2004, INC delayed its endorsement of Gloria Arroyo until the week before election day when she emerged as being ahead of Fernando Poe Jr., the rumored preference of the sect, in the polls. In 2010, it switched from Sen. Manuel Villar to Sen. Noynoy Aquino five days before election day, when Aquino had dislodged Villar from being the topnotcher in the polls.

In 2019, it announced close to election day which 12 senatorial candidates it was endorsing. All were among those who occupied the top 12 spots in the last survey conducted by Pulse Asia that year.

An exception was its early endorsement of presidential candidate Joseph Estrada in the 1998 elections. That year, it endorsed Estrada for president months before the elections. This in spite of the fact that Estrada’s private life is the antithesis to the teachings of the religious sect. https://opinion.inquirer.net/

So, really, this INC drama of siding with both BBM and DDS against current moves to impeach VP Sara is a cease-and-desist signal based on an overblown sense of its influence that’s really just with regard to the two warring dynasties.

Recent meetings at INC central headquarters between INC executive minister Ka Eduardo Manalo and former President Rodrigo Duterte, accompanied by Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go on the one hand, and between Ka Eduardo and President Marcos, the first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and their son Rep. Sandro Marcos, on the occasion of the former’s 69th birthday, on the other, tend to show the unique position of the INC in relation to the two camps. https://www.manilatimes.net/

And the threat of holding a nationwide “peaceful rally” only reminds of 2001 when INC rallyists were so quickly agitated by politicians into that mad rush to the palace. TEKA. Ano ba talaga ang politics ng INC? For nation ba talaga or for INC only? Where does the Iglesia stand on China? And Antonio Contreras is right–kung makikialam ang INC sa pulitika, eh magbayad sila ng taxes; otherwise, wala silang karapatang makisawsaw in matters of the state.

Kung tutuusin pati, what’s one million votes when a Leni endorsement would could mean some 15 million. Good that Leni and the Liberals are staying away from the fray.