EDITORIAL – No room for violence

Groups waving red banners marched to EDSA yesterday, hoping to recreate the historic popular revolt that they boycotted 20 years earlier. The marchers gave anti-riot cops yellow flowers in mimicry of peaceniks, which communists have never been. Over at Camp Aguinaldo, the Armed Forces of the Philippines announced that it had foiled yet another coup plot, with 14 junior officers and about 200 enlisted personnel detained.

The restiveness is expected as the nation marks the 20th anniversary of the people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship. The key players in that revolt have all thumbed down a coup or another popular uprising to resolve current political problems, pointing out that present circumstances are different from those in 1986. But the admonitions have not stopped certain groups from trying to recreate the people power revolt.

It’s a free country, thanks to the 1986 uprising. Everyone is free to stage protests calling for the ouster of Malacañang’s current occupant, who has given her critics enough fodder to call for her resignation. AFP members are also free to risk being court-martialed for appointing themselves saviors of the Filipino people. Everyone is free to indulge in the national pastime, rumor mongering, now made easier by the Internet and text messaging.

No one, however, is free to use violence for political ends. That blast set off in a garbage can at Malacañang was supposedly just the start of a string of attacks, if we are to believe a shadowy group whose objectives are unclear. As usual, everyone is a suspect in the blast – from disgruntled military elements to the political opposition and even the administration itself. Yesterday a bomb threat was reportedly received at the main office of the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

The country faces enough problems, including a deadly Islamist terrorist threat, without having to worry about violence inspired by politics. People power captivated the world because it was a peaceful revolt. In the free society that was born of that revolution, there should be no room for violence.