Gridlock

It’s a free country, but we will never mature as a democracy unless we realize that freedom carries with it certain responsibilities. 

Part of responsible citizenship is to balance each individual’s rights with those of others. We can’t be at the head of the line all at the same time; we can’t do whatever we want in complete disregard of the consequences of our actions on others.

For those with no sense of civic responsibility, there are laws to compel responsible behavior. We have traffic lights and traffic aides to enforce road discipline. There are laws to promote fair competition. Laws, of course, are only as good as their enforcement. This is where we keep failing.

In strong democracies, rules governing mass actions are efficiently enforced. In Japan and South Korea, I’ve seen protesters marching around city thoroughfares in disciplined, roped-off lines, holding up protest streamers and shouting their complaints. But they keep to their designated areas and disperse within their allotted time.

I can’t imagine Tokyo or Seoul being shut down to make way for a “medical outreach” by a religious group. If a large crowd is expected, Metro Manila has several areas that can accommodate multitudes, such as Rizal Park and vast tracts of the Manila Bay reclamation area.

For those with a sense of civic responsibility, the timing of mass actions is also considered. There are two whole days each weekend for ostensibly charitable activities by any group. Disrupting the lives of millions on a busy weekday for the glory of one organization is uncharitable.

The venue and date of that Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) outreach the other day inevitably fueled speculation about a political agenda. The Felix Y. Manalo Foundation picked some of the busiest thoroughfares in the city of Manila, on a working Monday before a national holiday, to remind the nation that it can summon warm bodies for… gift-giving?

Do politicians need to be reminded, through a show of force, that the INC can summon two to three million adherents? The Roman Catholic Church has over 80 million Filipino members, but Catholics tend to gather by the millions usually in Rizal Park to welcome a visiting pope, or at EDSA to kick out a president.

In the people power revolts in 1986 and 2001, the INC was on the wrong side of history, and President Aquino is known to have little love for the group, even after its belated support for his candidacy in 2010. If it’s any consolation to the INC, P-Noy has also been threatened with ex-communication by the bishops of the Catholic Church, whose favorite ex-president is currently detained without bail for plunder.

The princes of the Church and disgruntled Filipinos at least picked Heroes’ Day, a national holiday, with Rizal Park as the venue, to hold the biggest protest action so far against P-Noy and the political establishment – the first “Million People March” against the pork barrel. That was a picnic, students and office workers did not suffer, and yet the message was delivered loud and clear.

The much-reduced attendance at follow-up rallies can be partly attributed to the venues and dates. People have to earn a living, there are schedules and dates to be met, and typhoons and floods are keeping students out of school often enough.

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The needy will welcome charity and will wait in line for hours for dole-outs from any group. But organizations that profess to be concerned with spiritual matters may want to complement their charity work with efforts to wean Pinoys away from mendicancy.

Politicians, jueteng lords and other racketeers, and certain religious groups develop a power base by encouraging dependence on their dole-outs. We would be a stronger nation if hard work, self-improvement and innovation are encouraged instead.

The hiss from the Palace is that P-Noy has consistently tossed out recommendations by all religious groups for appointments to government positions, notably to the judiciary and, more recently if the grapevine is correct, to the Bureau of Customs.

With his poll ratings still high despite a slip due to the pork barrel scandal, it’s doubtful that the mass gatherings of religious groups will make P-Noy bow to religious pressure or fear eternal damnation.

Local executives, however, are a different matter. The INC and the beneficiaries of its outreach program were not the only winners in that Monday gathering; Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada also gained brownie points with the group for allowing the event to proceed as planned instead of negotiating to have it moved to a weekend.

On Friday next week, the 25th, it will reportedly be the turn of the Jesus Is Lord Movement, this time in Rizal Park. Why do religious groups like to gather on weekdays in crowded cities when millions of non-members have to work or go to school?

In our country of malleable laws and transactional politics, laws can be suspended or skewed to favor a small group at the expense of the majority. There seems to be a mindset here that you’re not important enough unless you can disrupt other people’s lives.

I don’t know where religion fits into this. Aren’t we all taught early in life about the Golden Rule? Don’t we have lessons in civic responsibility? For the children of the digital age, a well-known admonition is “don’t be evil” – Google’s mantra, although now much criticized for instances of selling out to Beijing and kindred spirits.

The right to peaceful assembly is enshrined in our Constitution. Any group is free to hold a mass action, especially for a charitable event. People don’t really care whether the gathering is a case of muscle-flexing to grab politicians’ attention, as long as there is minimal disruption in the lives of non-participants.

We all have to follow the traffic lights. Freedom without responsibility can descend into anarchy, and lead to national gridlock.