Marikina’s plea: Wear our shoes at SONA

MANILA, Philippines – Leave Ferragamo, Hermes and Prada at home, please.

Lawmakers, spouses and guests attending President Duterte’s first State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday are being urged to wear eco-friendly outfits, handbags and Marikina-made shoes.

“I urged the lawmakers to wear locally produced products. They should represent their culture by patronizing their own products,” Marikina Mayor Marcelino Teodoro, a former congressman representing the city’s 1st District, said yesterday.

Marikina is known as the country’s shoe capital.

Teodoro said members of Congress should wear clothes made of piña or pineapple fiber, abaca, banana fiber, among others, to represent local culture and craftsmanship.

Meanwhile, barbed wire and shipping containers will no longer be seen at the SONA .

National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) director Chief Supt. Oscar Albayalde said militant and left-leaning groups would also be allowed near the Batasang Pambansa complex.

“We agreed to allow the protesters some 600 meters away from the Batasang Pambansa building,” Albayalde said.

In previous SONAs, police used barbwire to keep protesters at bay and prevent violent clashes.

Senior Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, Quezon City Police District director, is the ground commander of the 6,720 anti-riot policemen to be deployed to secure the Batasan Pambansa complex and its environs.

Leaders of militant groups vowed in a meeting with Eleazar that Duterte’s first SONA would be the most peaceful in the history of the country.

The NCRPO would also secure the US embassy in Manila, Don Chino Roces Bridge and the residence of former president Benigno Aquino III along Times Street in Quezon City.

A total of 11,000 police officers would be deployed for the SONA, Albayalde said.

More than 400 police officers from the Police Regional Office 3 will be dispatched for augmentation, PRO3 acting regional director Chief Supt. Aaron Aquino said. 

Police said Commonwealth Avenue would be closed to motorists starting at 12:01 a.m. on Monday until 12:01 a.m. the following day.

Albayalde ordered anti-riot policemen not to carry firearms and to observe maximum tolerance in dealing with the protesters.

Protests

About 9,000 workers from the provinces will join the SONA protests on Monday.

Christian Yamzon, media officer of Bayan, said workers belonging to different groups in Mindanao, Bicol and Southern Tagalog arrived in Manila yesterday.

“But unlike in the past, the workers will be staging a rally to express their support to the pro-people pronouncements of the Duterte administration,” Yamzon said.

Leni to attend SONA

Vice President Leni Robredo will attend the SONA, according to her aide.

Robredo’s attendance at the SONA comes as the Liberal Party (LP) has seen its ranks in the House of Representatives dwindling to just around 30 members from over a hundred a day after the elections.

Robredo is poised to head the LP.

Former president Aquino will not attend the SONA. Aquino had said he would watch the President’s SONA on television to be able to concentrate on its content. – With Helen Flores, Ric Sapnu, Mayen Jaymalin