The anti-Cha-cha rally on Wednesday succeeded despite every attempt to scare away the public. It is therefore a good time to reflect on the power and limits of public assemblies; no one can say I am merely making excuses.
We keep to the game of mass protests because it is just about the only authoritative way to express our communal sense, apart from casting ballots during elections—and even that is increasingly discredited. Wednesday’s success should prod us, however, to experiment with new ways to make our rulers listen.
Mass protests are the dinosaur of political mobilization. It assumes the physical existence of a plaza—in constitutional law called the “public forum”—of space accessible to speaker and audience alike. Today the public plazas of old have either gone to seed, or they have in fact been spiffed up and become too ornate for politics— and either way are usually overtaken by vehicular traffic. Even Plaza Miranda, the quintessential public forum in Philippine history and scene of the crime in the 1971 bombing of the Liberal Party proclamation rally, has been gentrified and become unrecognizable to old-timers.
Moreover, with the widening reach of television, modern protesters can reach many more people than old-style rallies that reached only passers-by and the readers of the next day’s newspaper headlines. TV coverage is the indispensable coup de grace for the successful protest action.
In American constitutional law, they have in fact recognized shopping malls as a new public forum. We ourselves are moving in that direction, but with its attendant problems. Malls are private property and subject to the control of their owners. US case law says that since these malls make money off the public’s access to their promenades, conversely they must respect certain rights enjoyed by that public, including their right to express themselves in ways that don’t disrupt the recreational interests of customers and the business interests of the stall owners.
Apart from the shrinking and shifting of the public space, mass protests trade in an increasingly devalued currency, namely, the presence of warm bodies. In the past (and I’m not referring to Wednesday’s rally), rally organizers have notoriously enlisted crowds-for-hire or the rent-a-crowd. The bona fide participants have often been mobilized more on the basis of their loyalty to organized political or religious groups, rather than a commitment to a larger cause. Gone is the magic of the spontaneous inspired multitude at Ninoy’s funeral all the way to the historic Edsa 1.
Thus the premium placed on the students: they are not for sale, they are organized, they are moved by lofty causes and, to top it all, they are articulate. But this merely exposes the hidden hierarchies among protesters, a pecking order so out of step with the democratic façade that rallies project.
Finally, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has perfected the game of stifling protests, and has actually outdone Marcos in many ways. Why bloody their heads with truncheons when one can simply block them from arriving at the protest site? Just stop their vehicles before they can enter Manila from the provinces. A PNP officer interviewed on ANC on Wednesday night confirmed this with a “switik” distinction: “We don’t stop people, we stop vehicles,” that is to say, for being “out of line” or those public buses or jeepneys found outside the itinerary authorized in their franchise.
The same PNP officer, asked about the size of the crowd, gave a sophisticated formula. He counted how many people fit per square meter at that part of Ayala Avenue, subdivided into those sitting and those standing. Hey, someone has been watching “Numbers” on TV! Come to think of it. If this is a game of manipulating numbers, why not just reduce the numbers through mental hocus-pocus? Just like with dagdag-bawas, why cheat retail when you can go wholesale?
Finally the government has often tried to scare away people with the danger of violence. This time around, they tried something new. First they announced power outages affecting the rally area. Next they scared people with the H1N1 virus. Propaganda leaflets appeared at MRT stations, saying that the Ayala event wasn’t a “swine-flu free rally.” Text messages and even Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita echoed the warnings.
The protesters have creditably responded with new forms of protest. One group, led by the Blas Ople Policy Center, has gone online and, just like the Obama campaign, utilized social networking sites in the Internet. They say that they have gained 20,000 supporters via Facebook. Another group, led by the youth volunteers of Rock Ed Philippines, have called themselves the “silent protesters” and raised their banner along Manila Bay with just two words: “Explain yourself.” Finally, the organizers have this time around reached out with smaller but equally creative protests outside Manila but, may I add, still courtesy of the national network of either the organized Left or the organized Church.
Problem is, Philippine politics is deaf to subtle pleas, and responds only to the in-your-face show of strength. But like Athenians who are closet Spartans, we are confused over what kind of strength we must show. Do we merely count the warm bodies at a rally? Should we narrow the list only to those who answer the call of conscience? Or is it rather more a question of “how well organized” and “how determined” our ranks are? Perhaps rather than search for the next Jose Rizal, we must instead find the modern-day Andres Bonifacio.
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