PHOTO ESSAY
Ayala Steals the Center Stage

If the Ayala protesters made the controversial CDs the butt of jokes, in New York it was the President’s mobile phone. 

PHOTOS BY AUBREY SC MAKILAN, DABET CASTAñEDA, AND ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
TEXT BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

Long and wide Ayala Avenue in Makati City became a virtual human jungle on July 13. Major newspapers described the day’s rally there as the biggest protest action thus far against embattled President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Various estimates placed the size of the crowd at anywhere between 40,000 and 65,000. 

The “usual suspects,” meaning of course the cause-oriented groups, comprised the bulk.

And they made much of the compact discs or CDs of conversations between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and a poll official – widely believed to be election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano – purportedly dealing with fraud in the 2004 presidential derby.  

They had placards with pictures of Macapagal-Arroyo brandishing CDs while saying “The fraud put me here” – instead of “The Lord put me here” as she was quoted as saying in an interview with Time Magazine. They had cardboard pieces designed to look like CDs hanging as decorations from their hats. They even had CD designs painted on their faces. 

And they made a lot of fun of the alleged conversation between Macapagal-Arroyo and Garcillano, particularly the part where a woman sounding like the President is heard saying “Hello, Garci” – with a group of children brandishing a placard that has the woman saying “Buking tayo” (We’ve been exposed).  But even as they spent much of the day hurling joke after joke on Macapagal-Arroyo and Garcillano, they also remembered the lives snuffed out under the watch of the current Malacañang occupant. The Southern Tagalog chapter of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) brought over a huge collage of images of all the activists slain in the region since 2001, when Macapagal-Arroyo first came to power, a collage arranged into a mosaic that formed the President’s face.

Meanwhile, some young men and women would take advantage of the lulls in the rally to talk about the hot issues of the day.

Some observers would say that the rally was not only political but also had a showbiz flavor, with the appearance of actress Susan Roces-Poe and her daughter Mary Grace and grandson Brian. Susan is the wife of the late actor and 2004 presidential aspirant Fernando Poe, Jr., who had a pending electoral protest when he died late last year. 

But the protest was not confined to Ayala Avenue. While tens of thousands were giving vent to just outrage in Makati, there were others doing the same thing in the country’s other major population centers, like Negros Occidental province south of Manila. Elsewhere in the world, in Hong Kong and New York for instance, Filipino migrants and migrant workers were holding their own rallies. 

And if the Ayala protesters made the controversial CDs the butt of jokes, in New York it was the President’s mobile phone. The taped conversations are said to be mobile-phone conversations. 

Meanwhile, back in Makati, the rally was not limited to the locals. There were foreigners who took part in the action as well. Bulatlat

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© 2004 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

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