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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Malilong: Sheer genius
By Frank Malilong Jr.
The Other Side
Both sides played with fire and both came out badly singed in that rally near Mendiola last Friday.
The rallyists and the police share the blame for the violent dispersal of the gathering, the former for provoking the police and the latter for allowing themselves to be provoked.
The rallyists had a permit to demonstrate at Plaza Miranda but were allowed to gather at the San Sebastian Church where they had mass.
That they attempted to cross Mendiola knowing fully well that they were forbidden to do so only shows that their purpose was anything but religious even if they were carrying rosaries and two images of the Virgin Mary, instead of placards and streamers.
When you challenge authority, you should be prepared for the consequences. The protesters baited the police so they should stop wailing over what the latter did to them.
When you knowingly provoke someone with plenty of water in his hands, you should be ready to get wet.
Other protesters have suffered worse in the past but none was heard complaining on primetime television.
Of course, the police over-reacted. But what can you expect from people who have received instructions to abandon maximum tolerance in favor of the calibrated preemptive response?
The policemen are trained to obey orders, not ask questions from superiors. They had been told to prevent entry to Mendiola, at all costs. So when the rallyists began to march towards that direction, they fired their water cannons.
Malacañang won that battle but it can ultimately lose the war. I have serious reservations on the invocation by Novaliches Bishop Antonio Tobias of the Holy Spirit as the one waging battle versus Malacañang, unless God has dropped His neutrality on political matters.
But I can see many people nodding in complete agreement with the melodramatic claim of Archbishop Oscar Cruz that the poor bishops and the others in the so-called procession were subjected to indignity and ridicule.
Tobias views the dispersal as a catalyst that would unite the Roman Catholic Church in the country against the administration.
The prediction of a Church versus GMA fight may be exaggerated but I would not be surprised if the country’s bishops rise as one in condemning the police and indirectly, Malacañang. Even the men of the cloth take care of their own kind.
Such an event would mean further isolation of the Arroyo administration and could signal its eventual collapse.
If President Arroyo has been able to thwart many attempts to oust her despite the loss of key allies, it is because the Church has chosen to tolerate her.
An increasingly critical, not necessarily directly confrontational, Church could tilt the balance and cause this administration to keel over.
If this is the whole point of that Mendiola procession, whoever conceived it must be credited for sheer genius.
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
(October 18, 2005 issue)
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