Sin urges Ramos to remember Marcos

Sin urges Ramos to remember Marcos

MANILA (Reuter): The Philippines' most influential churchman
said on yesterday that President Fidel Ramos should learn from
history and what happened to Ferdinand Marcos if he wanted to
succeed as president.

Cardinal Jaime Sin, the country's leading Roman Catholic
prelate, said he and Ramos remained close friends despite his
outspoken criticisms of the government but the president should
listen to the people instead of the flatterers around him.

"I tell him repeatedly that 'I criticize you because you are
my friend. A friend is somebody who can tell you not so nice
things and still love you'."

Sin, a powerful force in this predominantly Catholic nation,
accused Ramos in October of plotting one-party rule and wanting
to prolong his presidency beyond the constitutional limit of
1998.

The church and state have been at loggerheads since Ramos, a
Protestant, took office in 1992 and revitalized a campaign to
reduce the country's high birth rate through family planning.