water cannon incident

yesterday, a friend priest asked my opinion about the mendiola incident wherein several hundred rallyists were "cannonized" by the police to stop them from coming any closer to malacanang. honestly, by the time that i was asked, i never really had any opinion about it yet, maybe because i didn't see the event as surprising. everything went as expected.

well first of all, i think the rallyists (kme, kme bishops, along with several politicians) really were testing the police, and in effect the calibrated pre-emptive response stance of the administration. i mean, why have their demo there in the first place? they were allowed to hold mass at plaza miranda, where they were given a permit to demonstrate. according to reports, they were also allowed to proceed to san sebastian church. but there were several who moved towards mendiola, supposedly to have another mass in san beda. that was where the police broke the demonstration. (plus, how many masses can one attend in a day without one's soul going beyond heaven eh? just kidding folks!)

so i guess, i am one with the hawks (bunye, ermita, claudio) who think that these rallyists really wanted to provoke the police.

i am however not one with what the police did. i think they should have just allowed these rallyists to move on, if they pose no real danger, for tactical purposes. what is happening now is they just invited more and more criticism to their policies. and invited more enemies.

look, whereas before, they have bishops labayen, iniguez and tobias (plus cruz) who are openly against gma, now they will probably have more, who will agree not with the views of these bishops, but will sympathize at how they were "objectionably" handled by the administration.

"a little more of this and this thing will explode," says bishop tobias, and i agree with him, if the "this" in his statement refers to the lack of foresight of this administration. this is about arousing the sympathy of the people again, and in this particular battle, i say the anti-gma forces win.