We hope peace prevails during Powell’s visit

It is true that the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed by the Constitution. But that right is subject to certain rules and regulations and those restrictions are precisely to make sure that, first, the demonstration will be peaceful, second, that it will be orderly. The government, for instance, cannot allow a peaceful demonstration in the main artery of EDSA. That will be tantamount to putting a roadblock on Metro Manila’s main artery.

Sometime ago, there was a rally in front of Malacañang. Trucks dumped stones in the area for the demonstrators to throw. That is not a demonstration. That is a plain display of senseless force. The demonstrators also tried to scale the fence of Malacañang. Since then, the Palace had to electrify the fence in preparation for future unruly demonstrations.

Now some radical militant organizations are planning a demonstration this Friday during the visit of US State Secretary Colin Powell. We hope that the demonstration will not be as unruly as the ones that marked President Arroyo’s SONA address. There the police used the maximum tolerance policy and as a result, some policemen were victims of crowd violence. Because of that experience, the police are now going to strictly enforce the "no-permit, no-rally" policy. We hope they continue with the maximum-tolerance policy, but if the demonstrators break the law, they should be made to account for their misdeeds.

We sincerely believe that demonstrations are most effective when they are peaceful and orderly. The best proof are EDSA I and EDSA II. The rule of the law means the rule of reason, not the rule of force. We really do not see any problem that the country has that can be settled by force. Any solution to our national problems will have to start with the establishment of peace and order.

In Zamboanga City, militant groups protesting US presence in the country were pelted by rocks by irate residents. The police should have arrested and prosecuted those rock-throwing residents. This clearly shows that demonstrators are not always the first to resort to violence.

The job of the police is to protect both the rights of the demonstrators and the public. We can disagree without being disagreeable, differ without causing difficulties. The appeal should be to reason. He who resorts to force has already lost his reason.

US State Secretary Colin Powell will be the highest ranking US government official to visit this country since former US President Bill Clinton attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November of 1996. We don’t know what he is going to say. We welcome his visit. Whether we will agree or disagree with what he will have to say remains to be seen. But we will be better off just knowing what he has in mind.