Metro Manila traffic in gridlock due to SONA, Iglesia Ni Cristo Day

MANILA, Philippines - The stretch of Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City and Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City, including side streets in both areas, were hit by traffic gridlock due to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Arroyo and the celebration of the Iglesia Ni Cristo’s (INC) 95th anniversary.

Heavy traffic started to build up along Commonwealth Avenue, particularly the portion from Philcoa to the Sandiganbayan building on IBP Road, leading to the House of Representatives in Batasan Complex Quezon City as early as nine in the morning.

Rallyists waving red flags and anti-Arroyo banners arrived in groups at the Elliptical Road before 7 a.m., as thousands of riot police erected barbed wire barricades and blocked access roads leading to the Batasan Complex with trucks and shipping containers.

Heavy rains did not dampen the spirit of the estimated 12,000 protesters who held their ranks and even rocked to the music of a local band while calling on the President to step down by June 30 next year.

The demonstrators along Commonwealth Avenue did not leave their post despite the heavy downpour brought about by the low pressure area, which the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration       (PAGASA) said was sighted 120 kilometers east of Central Luzon.

Firetrucks and firefighters were also pre-positioned along Commonwealth Avenue.

Traffic gridlock also hit the stretch from Burgos Street corner Roxas Boulevard in Manila all the way to EDSA extension in Pasay City due to the influx of motorists who tried to avoid the heavy traffic due to the INC’s anniversary celebration at the Rizal Stadium.

Renato Reyes Jr., Bayan secretary general, said President Arroyo should have used her final SONA to end all speculations over her staying in power beyond 2010. 

Militants have strongly believed that President Arroyo would use the SONA to push further moves to change the Constitution in order to prolong her stay in Malacañang.

The Bayan leader anticipated that President Arroyo would once again leave a “legacy of lies” for the people, adding that the SONA had “glossy statistics” of supposed achievements of the administration even as it failed to address the “most pressing issues of the day” that includes her stepping down from power and Charter change.

The Alternative Law Groups (ALG) echoed Bayan’s observation, particularly criticizing President Arroyo’s suspicious dubious silence on “major” issues such as corruption, human rights, and term extension in her SONA.

Even environmentalists branded her SONA as “environmentally anemic.”

Thirty minutes prior to the President’s SONA, the rains briefly stopped, enabling Bayan and its allied organizations to burn its ninth effigy of Mrs. Arroyo.  

The 12-foot effigy, which was touted as the “biggest and most menacing” in recent years, featured “a rotting Arroyo” sitting on a throne mounted on a bulldozer. 

The effigy was titled “Gloria Forever” as it symbolized alleged attempts to keep the President in power beyond 2010 through con-ass and Cha-cha.

Also earlier, militants burned a smaller effigy of President Arroyo, portraying her as a virus, titled “Swine Glo”.

“President Arroyo’s valedictory SONA was a very defensive and vicious rejoinder that was addressed primarily to her critics. Despite the attempt to cover numerous topics, the three major issues that had hounded her presidency – corruption, human rights and term extension – had been conspicuously left out in the SONA,” said lawyer Marlon Manuel, ALG coordinator.

Relatively peaceful

A contingent of observers from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) declared the SONA protests as generally peaceful despite a number of mauling incidents of alleged “infiltrators” by activists as well as a brief commotion caused by the attempt of another group of protesters to cross the other side of Commonwealth Avenue (Elliptical Road-bound side) to stage their program.

PNP spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina said there were no untoward incidents reported between the groups of protestors and the police units tasked to secure the perimeter of the Batasan Complex where the SONA was delivered.

Espina credited the peaceful atmosphere not only to the heavy rain that drenched the ranks of the protestors, but also on the agreement struck between the police and the protestors.

“With or without rain, we had expected that the SONA would be peaceful. The set of rules set between the police and the leaders of the protesting groups helped a lot,” he said. – With Dino Balabo, Helen Flores, Cecille Suerte Felipe, Katherine Adraneda, Reinir Padua, Mike Frialde, Rhodina Villanueva, AP