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Hosed Down in October
By Marilou M. Aguirre
davaotoday.com
Published: Jan. 28, 2006
DAVAO CITY -- The Calibrated Preemptive Response (CPR) policy and Executive Order 464 of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pushed cause-oriented groups, human rights advocates, church people and even lawyers out to the streets to protest what they deemed as an “undeclared martial law” by the government.
Legitimate protests, they said, had been deliberately suppressed in ways that match the repression of the Marcos dictatorship. On Oct. 14, the police in Metro Manila dispersed through water cannons a prayer rally led by church people. Even lawmakers and former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona were not spared as they, too, were hosed down as they marched toward Mendiola.
Through EO 464, government and military officials were prohibited to attend, unless Arroyo allows, the Senate inquiry on election fraud, corruption and betrayal of public trust, among other charges that had been hounding Arroyo’s administration.
Here in Davao City, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte had been vocal in opposing martial law and even urged Arroyo to scrap her CPR policy. Yet, while a group of lawyers and activists were against the proposed Anti-Terror Bill hastened for approval in the House of Congress, Duterte was supportive of it.
Meanwhile, a 20-foot replica of David, Michelangelo’s famous statue, put
up near the Queensland Motel also stirred the City Council as the lawmakers, especially the women among them, protested the statue’s location and its supposed negative impact on people, particularly children. For three months, the statue was the center of a debate on morality and legality at the City Council. (By December, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte ended the debate, by deciding to let the statue be.) (Marilou M. Aguirre/davaotoday.com)
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