Why the Malacañang rally turned violent

Today, Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia is making the State of the Province Address and we can only speculate what her address would contain. For sure, a lot of Cebuanos would like to hear from her the mechanics of a possible Visayan Republic, which was cooked up by her and the other Governors of Samar, Leyte, Negros and Panay. While many Cebuanos still believe that the Philippines deserves a second chance to be run like heaven by Filipinos, that dream seems to be fast fading away. Nowhere in our history have we come this close to a possible independent nation of the Visayas. Let's see what the weekend has in store for us!

* * *

There is no question that the violent incident which happened at the fences of the Malacañang sa Sugbo the other day, which resulted in firemen and protesters injured was perpetrated by the protesters themselves. The fact that a fence was already placed there should have been more than enough for these protesters to continue with their rally behind those fences. Why they had to break into those fences is more than obvious to me. If that rally ended up peacefully, like the way they ended peacefully in Makati, they wouldn't have made the headline news. And that's exactly what these protesters wanted to show, that there was some anti-GMA activity and the only way to land themselves on the front pages is to commit violent acts!

What we condemn was that these protesters brought innocent children with them to make the police look bad so that the public would blame them. If you ask me, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) should find out who these children were and their obviously irresponsible parents for bringing kids to a potentially explosive rally. The protesters insist that Cebu isn't GMA country. Well, the elections have proven these leftist very wrong… and we don't need another election to prove that. At this point, I'd like to say that next time around, the police should go into the offensive by arresting protesters bringing children with them.

* * *

So what if 40,000 people trooped to the heartland of Makati to ask Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) to resign? The Philippine Daily Inquirer's front page photo on this rally asked the poignant question, "But where's the Confetti?" Indeed, in the old EDSA Revolt days, yellow confetti rained down into the street marchers. That rally obviously didn't have the support of the people working in the high-rise buildings of Makati City. Perhaps many of them were turned off by the huge KMU banner placed strategically on the corner to make people think that this rally was a KMU organized rally.

Perhaps the best commentary about that rally came from Philippine Star publisher Max Soliven who wrote in his column "By The Way" the title, "The anti-GMA Rally was Impressively Large; But too many there actually hated each other!" Indeed, politics always makes strange bedfellows. I mean we saw in the Star the photo of Susan Roces raising the hands of former Defense Secretary Renato de Villa as if they were on a "miting de avance". Indeed, Pinoys love politics so much, they go to rallies like it was a Sunday picnic, without realizing the damage politics have done to this country!

Last Wednesday, the Philippine Star came up with a great story that Presidents in this country refuse to fade away, but jockey for airtime. How true. Former Presidents Tita Cory Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos and Erap eat, sleep and talk politics to stay in the limelight. They should look at the examples of the former Presidents of the United States, like former Pres. Jimmy Carter who gets himself busy building homes for the homeless, like when we met him in Tagbilaran City, or the example set by former US Pres. Bill Clinton who became the emissary of Pres. George Bush to help the tsunami victims.

In the United States, their famous generals also fade away… that's exactly where we got this phrase from the farewell speech at the West Point of that great American Cesar Gen. Douglas MacArthur who said, "Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away." Alas, we can't say that to the old Pinoy soldier Gen. Fortunato Abat, who even wanted to form a military junta to change our form of government. Other ex-military men, like Billy Bibit who once asked for reforms in the government was given a lucrative post at the Bureau of Customs… where smuggling flourished here. When he was booted out, he was the first to ask the President to resign. Indeed, retired military men ought to learn to fade away.

* * *

For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila's columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com