"No Permit, No Rally"

Try Googling "No Permit, No Rally". Or GoogleNews it.

The "No permit, No rally" rule is a recent invention of the paranoid Arroyo administration (after the Edsa Tres disaster) to prevent anti-Arroyo protesters and opposition groups from organizing massive rallies against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (no matter how peaceful it is) in the future.

Here's an example of how Arroyo's police goons tried to disperse a recent anti-Arroyo rally thru intimidation and physical bullying.

Last Friday night, I raged at a Philippine National Police (PNP) officer named Bondoc and it was captured on TV. It happened because this officer, with a few underlings, took charge of dispersing a crowd of peacefully assembled urban poor group at the San Carlos Seminary gate who had placards calling for “truth” (katotohanan) and chanting slogans supporting former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong's fight. They harassed and threatened the hapless protesters with threats of arrest and physical bullying. When Sen. Serge Osmeña alighted from his car, I requested him to give this officer a brief on the right to assembly.

Serge obliged, I spotted Bondoc who tried to scurry away; but I caught up and made him face Osmeña. Why was this cop running away? Because he knows that which he does in driving away protesters is wrong, yet he does it anyway and this enrages me. You want to reason with such characters who will do what is wrong even if they know it? Serge had his moment with Bondoc, then junta-leader-wanna-be Fortunato Abat arrived and had his minute of klieg lights, but on the wrong side, justifying the police suppression instead of supporting the right to protest.

Under the Arroyo regime, the right to assemble and expression has been systematically cut down and up. The police and military not only block exit and entry points at and from communities where marches can start, they climb up passenger buses to seek out potential groups and send them back or accost pedestrians walking in threes or fours and harassing them. This is a deliberate policy and tactic to break up any assembly before bigger groups are formed of perfectly peaceful and legitimate assembly.