It was 4:00 PM. Everyone in PBCom building was in a hurry to go home. Our training class was dismissed earlier than usual. The inter-faith rally has begun. The management is worried of hooliganism, the rest of us was just worried about walking the distance from PBCom tower to the MRT station in Ayala.

I packed my things, picked my back pack ang head towards the exit. speeches ang yells from the nearby Paseo de Roxas greeted me as I stepped out. Headed towards the underpass and was determined to start the long walk.

As we pass through Paseo, Enoch, a co-worker asked me if we could stay for a while and listen to what the politicians are saying. I was really not in the mood for hanging around that day. At the same time, I am not interested in listening to politicians saying what has been said before. The same banana, different day. You just get tired of it. At the same time, it actually feels like watching a comedy seeing Erap egging a President to step down (Whether that president was actually elected by the majority or won the presidency by fraud).  I Said no, but Enoch is persistent. Eventually, I agreed. As we move forward to get a better look at the crowd, I was amazed. It’s a sea of humanity. 

It has been a while since I last attended a protest rally. That was way back college years when I was still an active member of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) Cagayan Valley. Along the way things happen, somehow, you get disillusioned or simply got tired of things. That was the time when you turn your back and moved on.

I was beginning to feel dizzy, I was about to tell Enoch that I have to go, but he’s busy talking with someone. Eavesdropping to their conversation. I overheard that some protesters were unable to join the rally due to different reasons. Some were stopped at Laguna by LTO because of the Jeepneys permit to enter the metro and other groups were stopped because of phoney reasons.

I was thinking, If only the president allows the people accused of involvement in this multi-billion peso scam to come out in the open and try to clear their names, then there is no need for protests like this. Why is the Government so afraid of people coming together? Was it because there no longer any doubt in the mind of the populace that there are truths with Lozada’s testimony. Is the goverment (especially malacañang) beginning to fear its own shadow?

Right then and there, I feel like a college student again. Maybe, if the mind begins to forget, the heart never ceases to remember. Is my respect for my government taking a back seat if I ask myself how much I  love my country? The answer is without a doubt, YES!

During times like this, being neutral is a mortal sin. One needed to know if they are black or white. There is no middle ground for truth.

Enoch looked at me and said ” Tara na, malayo pa lalakarin natin” I looked at him and said, “una ka na bro, Maiiwan muna ako dito”.