Why so squeamish about controlled mass actions?

Malacañang stirred a hornets' nest among the opposition and their cause oriented cohorts when it announced recently that it would take "calibrated preemptive response" against street demonstrations. The move was a turn-around from the policy of maximum tolerance exercised by the government these past years. No wonder howls of protests greeted the announcement. However, the general public including businessmen and church officials have welcomed this new development.

Mass actions became regular phenomena after Martial Law, perhaps as a result of the new openness felt by mainstream Filipinos after years of repression. With the two Edsas as model the assumption has been that any group has the right to assemble anywhere anytime to air its grievances. For its part the government just looked the other way as communist-inspired groups took to the streets at the faintest shadow of an issue shouting invectives to authority figures and stoking anti-social sentiments among the citizenry. Tolerance was the posture of past governments - from Aquino to Ramos to Estrada and even during the past four years of PGMA's term.

But this liberal outlook on public display of contrary convictions has already been abused, especially by cause oriented groups which are actually left-leaning organizations disguised as people's advocates. In fact, with the adoption of the Cory constitution in 1987 containing a provision on party-list representatives as members of Congress, there has been a proliferation in the last two decades of banner touting protest groups that have been perpetually in the streets trumpeting their collective discontent.

This is ironical. Since these members of Congress are evidently god-parents of leftist organization, as indicated by the names of their party affiliations as well as by their anti-establishment staunch, the government is actually subsidizing the activities of the groups that are calling for its downfall. Such subsidy is eating much into the budgetary allocation of the Lower House considering that each party-list member has no less than P60 million pork barrel annually.

Leaders of these groups, including some member of the opposition, have been quick to denounce the counter move of PGMA's administration against street demonstrations. Some media men have also done their share of putting the administration to task even to the extent of accusing it of testing the waters for Martial Law declaration.

But what was Malacañang exactly trying to do? Did it abuse its authority in issuing a warning against mass actions? Unless one is paranoid, he could not have misunderstood the good intention of the Pasig office. A government is constituted to govern, and to govern means to control. Armed with the laws of the land, a government has the duty is to see to it that the life and limb of every citizen is safeguarded. That's why we have the law enforcement agencies, the defense establishment and the justice system. Security - that's the main concern of the government. Security for the country as well as for the ordinary man in the street. And when that security is breached through mass activism the government cannot just fold its hands. It has to assert its authority even if in doing so some rights, individual or collective, are transgressed.

Human rights are actually negotiable if these impinge on the rights of the majority. The cause oriented groups which have been used to blocking traffic and creating mayhem in business sections just to shout out their grievances are clearly making a mockery of the law. They should therefore be stopped - not from exercising their right to peaceably assemble but from abusing such right. Going to the streets without permits is one such abuse. Inciting people towards civil disobedience or towards committing seditious acts is another. And of course fomenting violence is abuse of the most reprehensible kind.

Yet for trying to control the activities of street parliamentarians some politicians who have congenital aversion towards the party in power have cried foul! Shades of Martial Law! they complained. What an over-reaction! So let them cry wolf. But let there be sanity in protest actions. The law must prevail.