The State of the Nation in a Day
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University Avenue at the UP Diliman campus fills up with SONA protesters on July 27, 2020. (Photo by Arrem Alcaraz/KODAO)
Today is the last Monday of July when the president of the Philippines delivers his annual State of the Nation Address (SONA). It happens to be the fourth month, and counting, of the world’s longest, and some say, harshest, Covid-19 lockdown.
The SONA is much-awaited by everybody who’s anybody in the firmament of political power in the country. Together with the diplomatic corps, they fill Congress’ session hall to listen to the president’s report on the government’s accomplishments the year past, and what’s in store for the next 365 days by way of presidential programs and policies. As cameras whirl and click, VIPs in their SONA best sashay on the red carpet leading to the hall. Welcome to the official Philippine pomp and pageantry that can happen only on a SONA day.
It is also a tradition for activists to convene nearest the SONA site, the better to dramatize their own version of the state of the nation. They never fail to gather a huge crowd of placard-bearing citizens in a collective affirmation of the freedom of assembly and speech. And it has always been the duty of the police to keep them away from the president.
But owing to the pandemic, the manner of the president’s address and the protest action are changing today, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte’s penultimate SONA; he is on the last two years of his six-year term.
A giant banner against the anti-terror law (Photo: Mel Matthew/Manila Today)
About two weeks earlier, a broad coalition of citizens, including former high officials of several administrations, academicians, church leaders, heads of people’s organizations, artists, and more than 60 civil society organizations announced its alternative SONA, calling it SONAGKAISA. It’s a play on the acronym and the word “nagkaisa,” meaning, “united.” Could this be another portent of things to come? You know, groups and individuals, hitherto split apart by organizational and political differences now drawn together by common issues and sentiments about what’s wrong in the country.
With a huge rally looming, the police warned that mass gatherings were not allowed due to Covid-19. Ergo, SONAGKAISA is wishful thinking, the protesters would be better off doing their thing online. Not quite, quipped the SONAGKAISA lawyers, also an impressive array of legal luminaries who, too, now banded together. The rights to assembly and free expression are constitutionally guaranteed and could not be illegalized by police directives or by any agency, even by the presidential Inter-Agency Task Force designated to handle the pandemic. After all, the activists have proved two things in this season of the pandemic. One is their ability to observe the health protocols in their recent protest actions; and two, their determination not to back off from battle.
Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte eventually announced that she would issue the permit for the rally, which SONAGKAISA organizers had decided to hold on the 18-lane Commonwealth Avenue, Metro Manila’s widest thoroughfare leading to Congress. The police and the protest leaders met, discussed the conduct of the rally, and even conducted a joint ocular inspection of the designated rally site along Commonwealth Avenue. It was right in front of the Commission on Human Rights building, curiously a favorite target of the president, who is known for cursing human rights as a bane to his peace and order drive.
Then came the damper, courtesy of the powerful interior and local government department headed by a retired army general: no rallies allowed on SONA day, in keeping with health protocols. The good Quezon City mayor was no longer issuing any permit. Rally organizers stood their ground, they were pushing through with SONAGKAISA on Commonwealth Avenue. The police threatened to impose the government ban at all costs. The entire Philippine National Police was put on red alert; it was to deploy 14,000 officers on SONA day. Reinforcements from nearby provinces were to stand by. The Armed Forces of the Philippines were also poised to mobilize whenever necessary.
Tension rose again. Until a compromise was reached.
The rally could still go on, said the police, but only on the campus of the University of the Philippines (UP) where the activists had twice brazenly assembled sans a permit and in spite of police checkpoints. On June 12, in the first openly defiant mass rally during the pandemic, they denounced Duterte’s “coddling” of a police general and his subalterns who violated the health protocols. They claimed it embodied everything that was wrong in the government’s handling of the crisis; the issue was the “unconstitutional” anti-terror bill that Congress had rushed “as if terrorism was a matter of life and death more than the novel coronavirus.” The activists said fine to UP in lieu of Commonwealth Avenue, even without the police telling them so.
And so, today, by 7 a.m., the whole stretch of University Avenue is marked for physical distancing, and the stage and sound system by the statue of the Oblation are in place. An hour or so before the rally begins, workers, farmers, fisher folk, the urban poor, government and public employees, professionals, youth and students, church people, opposition legislators, indigenous communities, artists, and LGBTs, arrive in their colorful garbs, with props, telling placards, face masks and bottles of disinfectant. Slogans rend the air. There is music. The mood is festive, rousing, electric.
The LGBTQ community add its voice to the real state of the nation. (Photo: Mel Matthew/Manila Today)
A little past 10 a.m., speakers –one after another--present the people’s version of the state of the nation: The president has remained divisive when people need to be united, inspired, and motivated to move as one against a common enemy; government has seriously failed to address the public health crisis and the ensuing economic crisis that grind the poor and the middle class to straits of despair; Covid-19 cases are increasing exponentially, threatening to crash the whole health-care system while the president rants and rambles in his nocturnal soliloquys. He remains largely dependent on ex-police and military officials in managing the pandemic, indeed, in managing the affairs of government.
Health workers on the frontlines of the pandemic take their concerns to the streets. (Photo: Mel Matthew/Manila Today)
An anti-terror law has begun sending chills to dissenters and critics of government in spite of official assurances to the contrary. Franchise is denied the media conglomerate ABS-CBN which, it turns out, is the fulfillment of a personal vendetta by the aggrieved president. It comes on the heels of the Rappler/Maria Ressa case and the outright Red-tagging of alternative press outfits.
Protesters representing various causes gather together for the SONA. (Photo by Arrem Alcaraz/KODAO)
There are two standards of justice during the pandemic, one for ordinary people who are routinely arrested for being pasaway or hard-headed, and another for police generals and lawmakers whose “human frailties” must be accorded consideration.
After two hours or by noontime, the protesters disperse, taking with them their trash. The shortest SONA protest rally in history is ended. No elaborate effigy is burned on site this time, only a virtual caricature online. They hear the news: Some 34 of their comrades are in police custody in Cavite, Caloocan, Laguna, and elsewhere.
Later in the afternoon, Filipinos shall listen to the SONA where there’ll be no mention of any tangible and cohesive plan to overcome the pandemic. They shall also hear the president cajoling his chosen audience of 50, more or less, to applaud him for another urgent legislative proposal -- the revival of the death penalty. They shall also hear him capitulate to the bully nation that claims ownership of the entire South China Sea.
By night fall, Filipinos will learn that 141 citizens demanding rights and social justice have been arrested all over the country, further jamming congested prison cells because, yes, it is the state of the nation.
Bonifacio P. Ilagan
Bonifacio P. Ilagan has been an activist since the 1970s, surviving the Marcos martial law and its succeeding editions. He remains active in the mass movement in the Philippines, particularly in human rights and the arts.