JEDDAH, 21 October 2005 — THE whole debate about the now infamous hosing down of opposition protesters on Mendiola Street near Malacañang Palace last week, including Sen. Jamby Madrigal and former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, is now being spun by many as having been justified.
This is hard to stomach, especially since this violent breakup of a peaceful march brings back memories of the worst excesses of the Marcos dictatorship.
Now some of the Arroyo administration die-hard supporters are implying that hosing down the demonstrators was justified because a group of three bishops who had been initially part of the demonstration later allegedly melted away from it. Now, how one can justify using violent actions against Madrigal and Guingona, but not against religious leaders, is mystifying in the least, and hypocritical in the extreme.
I watched the demonstrators being hosed down on television, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. In fact it was all the more horrifying considering the good behavior of the protesters: They weren’t running amok, they weren’t attacking people, they weren’t burning things down and they weren’t hurling rocks at policemen or windows. In fact, they were hosed down suddenly when they had stopped to negotiate with the police to allow them to cross the Mendiola Bridge.
News reports that the police didn’t know how the fire engine had gotten there, or that they hadn’t given the go-signal to open the fire hose are all unbelievable. Now, reports that Madrigal’s bodyguard was seen brandishing a firearm during the rally, when the law explicitly forbids the carrying of them at rallies, is being used against the senator. This is a ridiculous thing to hold against the senator. For sure she needs protection both for being a senator and because she is a very rich individual, and as such having an armed bodyguard is par for the course given the high incidence of kidnap-for-ransom gangs in the Philippines.
The bottom line in all of this is that the police used an inordinately excessive amount of force to disperse the protesters, who hardly posed a threat to Malacañang or to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. If they had been armed terrorists, I would have agreed to overwhelming force being used to stop them in their tracks. But Guingona and his fellow protesters hardly qualify as being an armed menace to the nation.
Malacañang Palace has now announced that police deployed around the presidential home will be armed with additional video cameras to film protesters.
This is a creepy move that echoes practices of totalitarian regimes around the world. Is President Arroyo that afraid of a bunch of unarmed demonstrators that she had to order the implementation of the so-called calibrated pre-emptive response policy?
Such policy should be immediately stopped and the usual “maximum tolerance” be brought back. If the president is as innocent as she claims, a few unarmed protesters should not rattle her confidence as much as they seem to be doing. I think the president’s overreaction speaks volumes about the guilty feelings that must be racking her.
I will be on leave for the next few weeks. Manila Moods will return on Nov. 18.
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