Repressing "people power"

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/15/2005



Nothing like the GMA-Garci tapes and the Sammy Ong-Vidal Doble witness drama had ever happened during Estrada’s time, but when the call for “people power” came about tens of thousands (not hundreds of thousands) converged at the Edsa Shrine. In the case of the stand off at the gate of San Carlos Seminary last week the media waited but didn’t get to see such a spectacle. Some called in “protest fatigue”, but what is true is that its “police phobia”. The past year’s police whacking of heads and tear-gassing has made people wary.

The persistent repetition of the line “no permit, no rally” and the implementation of the consistent, systematic and brutal dispersal of even legally covered rallies be it on busy streets or at Church gates aimed only at one thing – scaring the non-hard core people from joining rallies even if they believe in the cause. This is a distinctly Gloria cum jueteng-PNP generals’ policy unseen even during Marcos’ days and certainly not even contemplated during Estrada’s administration. This brutal policy has brutalizes the police force as it brutalizes its victims.

The mainstream media has made no attempt to analyze this situation except to echo what it thinks is a cute and dazzling novel term “protest fatigue”. If it did it would discover that GMA and her brutal police generals are actually grotesquely deforming the values of the PNP force, making it into a law enforcement agency that has absolutely no regard, no respect and no understanding of the law and what their police uniforms mean. But what can we expect when PNP top generals live on the largesse for unlawful jueteng and drugs.

At the San Carlos Seminary barricades a broad spectrum of forces showed up. Daily, thousands streamed in, peaking in the late afternoon hours and evening, thinning during the hot noon and building up again after; but the crowd could not grow because of the systematic breaking up of the building mass. Many joiners coming in groups of three or more were being shooed away even before they made it to the gates, and those who make it would be pushed off to the sides and farther.

The organized forces at the San Carlos Seminary gate responded by being like fluid against a permeable wall, filtering back again and again for days until the day of assault. Then the organized forces marched in the thousands up Edsa to the gate. They were met a hundred yards away and the tug-of-war reached to the pedestrian overpass of Guadalupe. Most of these went uncovered by media, but the spectre of a fascist state was being played out right under their noses.

Consider the following: the cops were invariably without name plates, a clear violation of the law and obviously intending to hide their identities because they would be committing illegal acts like harassing mere pedestrian just because they are in groups of threes or fours, stopping a peadeful march walking towards the San Carlos Seminary gate, swinging clubs at peaceful ad hapless marchers, carrying firearms (which we ubiquitous and really overkill) in crowd control operations, and certainly the use of two APC’s carried it to ridiculous if sinister heights.

The “enlightened” sectors like the IBP, the academe, the opinion leaders, don’t seem horrified by the way the law is being run roughshod by the very agencies that are tasked by society to enforce the laws? Marcos banned police firearms at rally sites, and Estrada didn’t lift a finger against the mob, “civil society” and thousands of “uzis” (usyoso) Sin called to the Edsa Shrine.

The other means to abort people power is control of media. At Edsa Dos ABS-CBN and GMA7 had twenty hour rabble rousing to consolidate the crowd at the Edsa Shrine. At Edsa Tres Net25 drummed up mass participation. At the San Carlos Seminary gate there was just the regularly news update and brief on-the-spot reports. Nothing like Edsa. And then there’s systematic counter-propaganda. GMA’s counter-propaganda machine is always on overdrive, including their commentators given board directorships and paid hacks in print and broadcast media.

GMA has special black prop operations groups, one has been putting up “Rez Cortez for President” streamers–to impute self-serving motives to Rez and trivialize the things he is involved with. Rez got a text from some friends that such streamers were being put up at the Morato-Timog Boy Scout rotunda, he quickly requested some supporters to take them down. This is how vicious GMA’s propaganda operations are. Ely Pamatong is one of their counter-propaganda assets, and he showed up at the San Carlos Seminary gate to muddle the image of the struggle there.

Some may ask: “What’s wrong with Gloria’s repression of the right to assembly and expression? It’s irksome anyway.” Its anti-People and anti-democratic that’s what. In an atmosphere of suppression and repression physical show of people power can be curtailed. People generally look for the path of least resistance. But people power can not be stopped. Even under repressive GMA people power roars in numbers too big to ignore, in the surveys that show: three out of four Filipinos want her out, and even before the GMA-Garci tapes 60% already believed she cheated. Gloria cannot govern anymore. People Power has the last say, saying: “Time’s up.”

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