Carnival of hecklers

A strange subculture has developed around the annual State-of the-Nation Address of the Filipino president.

The occasion has been taken as an opportunity by every political group and faction to indulge in an orgy of protest and celebration, of denunciation and praise, depending on which side of the political fence of the day one stood. The road to the Batasan is jammed by demonstrators on each day every year that Congress opens and the President speaks.

It has not always been this way. In the distant past, the State of the Nation Address was entirely ceremonial and the biggest challenge government faced was how to get the people to listen to what the President of the Republic had to say.

I suppose the tradition of conducting a political orgy coinciding with the SONA may be traced back to January 26, 1970.

On that historic day, tens of thousands of student activists, from both the ranks of the "moderate" and those of the "radical" groups, gathered in front of the old Congress building in Manila to denounce the "true state of the nation" as President Ferdinand E. Marcos was delivering his before the finely costumed elected representatives of the people.

What Marcos said that day no one remembers. What history records is that as he approached his car, after the speeches and cocktails, someone shoved a paper crocodile towards the President of the Republic. Then all hell broke loose.

The police, then untrained in the strange duty of crowd control, charged into the ranks of hooting student demonstrators, wielding their truncheons with wild abandon. A riot blossomed.

Many students were hurt that day. At least one coed was maimed for life because of severe truncheon blows. A few skulls were cracked. And our politics would never be the same again.

Four days later, on January 30, 1970, an indignation rally against police brutality was held before Malacanang Palace.

Although a broad range of concerned citizens went to that rally, including nearly the entire faculty of the University of the Philippines, led by its president, the radical groups were prepared for confrontation. Armed with pillbox bombs and Molotov cocktails, the radical frontliners charged at police lines. They commandeered a fire truck and rammed the Palace gate, crying Revolution! And proclaiming someone named Bernabe Buscayno the next President of the Republic.

Gunshots crackled along Mendiola – a streets that will see hundreds of rallies and demonstrations in the coming years. Street-fighting carried through the night. By the morning of the next day, four student activists have been killed. Hundreds were injured. The shops in what was then downtown were broken. There was fire and there was blood in the streets.

That event would spark a chain of bloody street confrontations that would continue on until Marcos declared martial rule on September 21, 1972. The series of violent street demonstrations from January to March 1970 would eventually be called the First Quarter Storm. It is a period that will be worshipped in radical lore and there would be in the coming years many attempts to replicate its emotional and political drama.

No effort at replicating it ever approximated that vital conjuncture.

Nevertheless, the radical leftist groups continue to force, each year, a reenactment of the First Quarter Storm – no matter how thin the issues are or how contrived the anger may be. It is an ideological compulsion on the part of CPP-linked groups such as Bayan and KMU – movements of fabricated rage that have lost their romantic luster, not to mention their relevance.

Since the leftists were predictably present during the SONA delivery, playing out their comical rage in the streets, every other group that had an axe to grind or an ambition to fulfill joined in the carnival of hecklers that congregated each time the President of the Republic delivered this otherwise obligatory speech.

After Joseph Estrada was ousted, his abandoned supporters joined the carnival of hecklers as well. This has made that carnival and truly pluralist gathering, bringing together every strand of the hopeless, the irrelevant and the plainly laughable.

Since the rascals were predictably present, soon it became mandatory that supporters of the sitting president gather their own adherents and demonstrate support to counter the heckling.

Last year, supporters of President Arroyo grossly outnumbered the carnival of hecklers. But they were not shoving on the police lines, delivering hysterical speeches or parading lampoon characters. They were not trying to be sexy to grab media space. They just gathered quietly at the Quezon Memorial Circle, avoiding becoming a nuisance to traffic flow.

I am not sure if the unholy carnival of leftists and Erap loyalists will mount any new act this year. Very likely, they will saying things we heard before.

I caught Bayan’s Teddy Casino on television Thursday night saying something totally idiotic about this government being extremely unstable only because the President met with young captains of the Armed Forces to listen to their grievances. Someone ought to lecture to this guy about the principles of proactive management.

At any rate, expect the annual ritual of posturing, heckling and fault-finding to happen on schedule this Monday. It seems anyone out of camera range on that crowded avenue leading to the Batasan will appear to be inconsequential to the course of our political unfolding.

The only person with something new to say on Monday will be the President.

But whatever she might have to say will surely not please the carnival of hecklers that will try to create a scene outside the Batasan. The cadres of the various factions of the left will wage up Monday morning nursing a contrived rage. They will take to the streets with knitted brows, ready to denounce what the President has not yet said.

Then, as they did last year, they will trudge back home with calamity in their hearts, angry at a speech they did not even bother to listen to.

The rest of the nation will, hopefully, not be distracted by the hecklers and will pay close attention to the message the President brings to the halls of Congress. It will be a message of hope to those who truly care for this nation often injured by the folly of its own people.