Turning off the independents

MANILA
The first point to make is: don’t call them “Million People” marches against the sensational pork barrel scam here because the turnouts so far have been nowhere close to that number.
Nobody is complaining about this discrepancy between the advertised turnout and the actual numbers because people are loath to be called spoilsports or killjoys and attract the crowds’ anger,
But there has to be truth in advertising. You can’t call a gathering of 100,000 people in Luneta, Manila’s famous park, a million men march. The last outing on Ayala Avenue in Makati was even more abysmal, netting only 3,000 souls. And before that the Edsa Tayo event was similarly thin in numbers.
This is the danger in Philippine public affairs. When the public and the media seize upon an issue as their “baby,” that issue becomes untouchable and its “parents” become hostile to even independent critique.
The pork barrel scam is one such issue that has been adopted by practically everybody as their cause. Public anger is so intense that everyone is on the bandwagon against the pork barrel and those accused of having pigged out on public money.
To the visible chagrin of Atty. Lorna Kapunan, over the public’s wanting to get their hands, literally, on her client, Janet Lim Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the scam. Kapunan knows Napoles will be lynched if the crowds can get to touching distance of her.
The danger in all this is that when an issue or a notion becomes the zeitgeist or conventional wisdom, woe unto the person who’s at the wrong end of everyone’s ire, like Gloria Arroyo, the Ampatuans, the military comptrollers, or the “Euro” generals who are all on the dock. And rightly so, for their apparent sins against the people.
But the reason there are courts of justice is because mobs are not fair substitutes to due process. Admittedly, our courts have not distinguished themselves as sanctuaries of fair play, especially for the poor and those without political connections.
That is precisely the reason we had the two Edsas, because social justice and fair play had become such rare commodities at that time.
There is ferment out there, no question about it and, as in many other public squares across the globe, it is bound to manifest itself more now than ever before. The common people have found their voices and they’re yelling at the top of the lungs. The genie is out of the bottle and it won’t ever go back into its former prison.
But will the tumult really continue, will it be able to sustain itself as a cattle prod on the government’s side? Is the lackluster turnout on Ayala Avenue an indication that the public’s agitation may be petering out? Are the ranks of the demonstrators thinning instead of multiplying?
One reason attendance at the last public outing was negligible may be the presence of what I call “professional” demonstrators who make themselves ubiquitous in public agitations. I don’t label them as leftists or rightists, just professional ralliers because that seems to be what they do in life.
There is also speculation that, from the other end of the political spectrum, reactionary political forces had helped finance the Ayala march.
But, whether any of these theories is true, ideology has nothing to do with the point I raise. The so-called million men march was the brainchild supposedly of unaligned, apolitical, non-ideological individuals who are sick and tired of how public officials have been looting the public treasury. The constant presence of organized groups at the rallies may be turning off the unaffiliated, independent citizens who just want to vent their grievances. I had meant to go to the first march in Luneta but found the pre-march press conferences of the “professional demonstrators” off-putting.
I am in full sympathy with the throngs out there inveighing against the misdeeds of public officials. Ideologically, I’m a liberal and therefore, more left than right, but no organized group(s) should be allowed to hijack an expressly independent movement. That isn’t fair play.
Every citizen has the right to a spot in the public square. But let the independents have their rallies, and others can have their own too. When the “professionals” appear, they turn off the ordinary citizens. Worse, they turn them away.
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