Rallying for good

Just as we are preparing to get this week’s print edition off the press, an extensive multi-sectoral rally is being prepared in Makati, thecentral business district in the capital. A parallel rally is underway here in Dagupan, the business center of the province, whose local government officials showed loyal support to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the previous week when she came for a visit.

The prayer rally in Makati, more than a culmination of sorts for the weeklong celebration of the 1986 EDSA-People Power anniversary, is expected to muster the biggest crowd so far in the growing calls for truth and moral ascendancy in the scandal-ridden administration of the President. The one here, led by the Catholic Church-backed anti-corruption and anti-charter change group AGCO, forms part of the now  numerous protest actions being held and organized at the local level in different parts of the country outside the capital.

The rallies, often tied up with a celebration of the Catholic Church’s Holy Eucharist, are by-and-large peaceful assemblies.

Despite placards and roars for Mrs. Arroyo’s ouster, the people at the helm of these rallies including former President Corazon C. Aquino, Archbishop Oscar Cruz and other church leaders, major business groups, the academic community and civil society groups, are one in their stand for the nonviolent and constitutional option to achieve this.

That is why they are demanding that Mrs. Arroyo resigns.

They want her to step down from her powerful office to pave the way for the elusive truth, primarily on the NBN-ZTE deal as well as the “Hello Garci” 2004 election scandal, which in fact puts into question the very legitimacy of her occupancy of Malacañang.

For as long as Mrs. Arroyo stubbornly asserts and sits out  her questionable  presidency, our people cannot expect to be served the truth, not even through the legal  process  that  she insists on because the justice department is evidently at her mercy.

The rallies are not actually based on a dream of having a miraculous repeat of the People Power phenomenon in as much as there is no intent to wreak havoc and violence. But just like 22 years ago, the people are taking to the streets to pray and stand up for what is good and what is just, they are crying out against evil and corruption. And that is a basic value that a nation’s people must never tire and cease struggling for.

The phenomenon and impact of the People Power may already be lost to some but it is nonetheless a legitimate expression of people’s dissent, protected and enshrined in our Constitution.