Church defies Comelec,
wants order put on hold
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The Diocese of Bacolod defied a Commission on Election deadline yesterday for the removal of its controversial “Team Patay, Team Buhay” tarpaulin in front of the San Sebastian Cathedral in Bacolod City, arguing that it is covered by the “broader Constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression and conscience.”

The tarpaulin bares a list of senatorial candidates whom the faithful should support and reject for their stance on the reproductive health (RH) law, which the Church has been opposing.

The Diocese of Bacolod is set to hold a huge “Crusade for Life” in Bacolod City in April to further stress its opposition to the RH Law, Fr. Felix Pasquin, rector of the San Sebastian Cathedral, said.

Team Patay list called ‘arrogant’
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The controversy over the “Team Patay, Team Buhay” list of the Diocese of Bacolod, that identifies senatorial candidates whom the faithful should support and reject for their stance on the reproductive health law, has stirred reactions even from within the clergy, with one of them calling it “unconscionable”.

Fr. Joel Tabora, president of Ateneo de Davao University, in his “Team Patay, Team Buhay: Unconscionable” post on his blog at http://taborasj.wordpress.com/author/joeltaborasj wrote: “Putting posters up about conscience in the context of a particular vote for or against particular people squanders and trivializes the moral authority of the Church.”

Sea Oil is eyeing a joint venture with sugarcane planters to set up a three-legged factory somewhere in Murcia and Bago that will produce sugar, ethanol and electric power, Enrique Rojas, president of the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, said yesterday.

Rojas, with United Sugar Producers Federation of the Philippines president Manuel Lamata, Mike Hinojales and sugar mill fabricator/consultant Mike Smith, met with Sea Oil president and CEO Francis Glenn Yu and his son Sea Oil COO Stephen Yu at the Sea Oil main office in Manila on February 19.

“We are doing this for our sugarcane planters,” Rojas said. “This move is geared towards ensuring the sustainability of the sugarcane industry when tariff on imported sugar is slashed down to only 5 percent by 2015 and our domestic sugar will face stiff competition from cheaper subsidized imported sugar.”