While the crowd were amused by the two, a more serious and a bit younger Francisco Ybañez, 69, carried a placard posted on a bamboo stick that had the words “Oust Gloria Now!”
“Basta hindi karapatdapat sa pwesto, dapat tanggalin” (Anybody not qualified for a position should be ousted), Mang Francisco said. “Tumanda na ako sa pakikipaglaban at handa akong makipag-rally hangga’t hindi napapatalsik si Gloria” (I’ve gotten old fighting and I’m all set to join a rally until Gloria is removed).
Mang Francisco lives in an urban poor community in Balara, Quezon City. He said he has been fighting to own the land where their house stands since the time of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He has retired and now lives with financial support from his son who is an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in Saudi Arabia. His son was actually set to come home that day but Mang Francisco begged off from fetching him from the airport. Their reunion would have to wait after the protest action, he said.
Next generation
It was also the first rally joined by 18-year old Girlie, a college student from Quezon City, who had not anticipated the long march from the Church to Welcome Rotunda, the boundary between Quezon City and Manila.
“Tumataas lahat ng bilihin pero ang sweldo ng parents namin hindi kaya ang baon namin hindi rin (tumataas)” (Prices of basic commodities are shooting up but my parents’ pay is not increasing and so we get the same allowance), she said shyly.
She wipes her face that has become oily by then, but she doesn’t regret, she said, and promised to join the next protest action to oust the president.
A 16-year old student wearing a black Che Guevarra shirt, the latest fashion craze of the youth, and a green skirt which looked like her uniform, also joined the rally with some of her friends. She said she has been joining mobilizations since she was 11 but issues may not have been clear for the young lass from a group known as Kasama. “Weekend naman kasi bukas kaya okay lang” (Tomorrow is Saturday so it’s just okay to join the rally), she said when asked why she was present.
Another young man catches the crowd’s attention with his all-black outfit and the red print on his shirt that read: “Punks Not Dead.” He wore stainless chains on his wrist, earrings which resembled a safety pin, and his hair looked like that of a character from an anime cartoon.
He is Jaro, 20, a second year Computer Science student at the University of the East and a member of the youth group AnakBayan (nation’s youth). When the alleged wiretapped conversations between Macapagal-Arroyo and Garcillano surfaced, members of another youth group, the League of Filipino Students (LFS) went around universities in Quezon City and Manila to conduct room-to-room discussions on fraud as a tool of corrupt bureaucrats while popularizing the “Hello, Garci” tapes and ring tones to their fellow students.
Earlier this week, some of their members attended the congressional inquiry on the alleged wiretapped conversation and distributed compact disc copies of the alleged conversation to the members of the House.
