Sona marred by security overkill

By Al S. Mendoza

 

I LIKE P-Noy’s Sona.

I love it.

If it were boxing, P-Noy unleashed crisp, telling punches that were more than enough to send his foe to dreamland.

It was like seeing Manny Pacquiao at his best – again.

But what I didn’t like was the traffic triggered by the Sona (State of the Nation Address) on July 22.

I am not alone.

A million or so of our kabaleyans got traffic-strangled that day that you begin to doubt the sincerity of P-Noy’s professed love for his boss (the people).

Massive road chaos marred that Sona so that behind his back, P-Noy absorbed stinging verbal jabs that somehow dulled the impact of his Sona.

The day of the Sona, I left Clark Freeport in Pampanga for home at about 10 a.m.  And home is Quezon City.

The trip normally takes me only an hour or so.

This time, it took me nearly four hours to reach home.

Reason?  Traffic jams all over.

I walked the last two kilometers or so to get home and beat my deadline for a column.

Buses banned from Commonwealth Avenue were diverted to streets that were as narrow as rice paddies.  Result: Gridlocks became a dime a dozen.

Commonwealth Avenue is the major artery leading to Batasan, where P-Noy delivered his Sona.

It was virtually closed to vehicular traffic.

Reason?  To secure the President.

Stupid.  How will you secure someone who won’t pass Commonwealth Avenue?

P-Noy flew by chopper to Batasan.

The million or so comprising of students, workers, bus drivers and other drivers of public utility vehicles, motorists and office-going public had been sacrificed for one man.

And yet, that man – even if he were President – did not pass through the road being secured.

Wasn’t that downright stupid, if not the height of impertinence?

In fact, what P-Noy’s security forces did was to subject P-Noy’s boss (the people) to untold misery if only to make their job easy.

Their way of eliminating a security risk (the boss) is to isolate the boss from the road that was not even in play in P-Noy’s trip to Batasan.

I am not against securing the President.  By all means, let us secure him.

But then, with the manner with which they did it, overkill is the word for it.

Totally disregarded was the comfort, the well-being, the dignity of P-Noy’s boss.

P-Noy didn’t even stay two hours at Batasan starting 4 p.m.

But, alas, P-Noy’s boss had been punished for practically one whole day due to monstrous traffic jams from morning till sundown.

Does P-Noy truly love his boss?

If so, why did he allow them to suffer immensely?

The next day, P-Noy went to Araneta Coliseum to watch songstress Dionne Warwick perform live and was photographed lapping it up.

As if nothing wrong happened to his boss the day before.

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