Lost in the continuing Aquino-Arroyo faceoff last week was that violent dispersal of a protest demonstration in Manila. While photos and video footages of the dispersal did make the newspapers and TV, there was hardly any comment about the incident, pro or con.
Interestingly, the complete absence of independent comment (as opposed to the natural angry reaction of those on the receiving end of the truncheons and hoses) cannot be attributed to total public fixation on the Aquino-Arroyo tiff.
The best guess is that public apathy with regard to that particular incident was well grounded. The dispersal did not invite public comment because the public felt the demonstration needed to be dispersed in the first place. The public must have actually applauded in silence.
So what was the demonstration about? Well, there was nothing extraordinary about the protest. It was all about the same jaded issues that professional hecklers keep rehashing time and again whenever the foreign funding starts running low.
Perhaps getting tired of mouthing the same old slogans, the protesters decided to spice things up a little bit, even if only in how they called themselves. So they called their protest the “Occupy Mendiola Movement.”
Jesus Christ! What a pathetic excuse to stage a protest. Just because the “Occupy Wall Street Movement” has spawned copycats in the West doesn’t mean communist-inspired Asian clones can thrive on the same menu.
What a ridiculous sight to behold protesters mouthing anti-US slogans in a demonstration they unabashedly piggy-backed on something spawned right in the heartland of US imperialism. No wonder the police whacked some heads with greater gusto.
By copying the Americans, our home-grown protesters have finally confirmed by their own actions what most people have long determined — that such demonstrations are only spiny on the outside but hollow inside. If you cannot be original, then you have nothing to sell.