While it was raining hard outside, Mrs. Arroyo spoke to an empty, well-lighted but closed House session hall with only her close aides and presidential guards, some with bomb-sniffing dogs in tow, listening.
She dodged reporters who were waiting for her at the main entrance to the building by using a backdoor in going to the session hall. Besides her aides and security personnel, no other people were allowed inside, not even House security men.
On hand to receive her at the back entrance was the chamber’s secretary general, Roberto Nazareno.
Press Secretary Noel Cabrera, whom reporters chanced upon at the main entrance, said Mrs. Arroyo’s SONA "would be short."
"It would last only between 30 minutes and 45 minutes," he said. SONAs of previous presidents lasted more than an hour.
But unlike Mrs. Arroyo, reporters who have been covering the House could not remember any of her predecessors rehearsing their assessment of the state of the nation right at the plenary hall of the chamber.
A Palace aide begged reporters not to write about the rehearsal, but without giving an explanation.
The President arrived at the Batasan building shortly before 5 p.m. An hour and a half later, she was still inside the House session hall, doing and redoing her first-ever SONA. – Jess Diaz