“Don't fool with us.”
This is the message of the thousands of protesters at the Million People March to Luneta on Monday morning, according to economist Solita Monsod, who attended the rally against the misuse of the public funds.
“We have a tipping point, and are dangerously close to meeting it because it's almost unanimous that what has been happening—the pork barrel—is an absolute scam on the Filipino people,” she told InterAksyon.com in an interview at the grounds of the Quirino Grandstand.
The event, which was driven by social media, made Filipinos aware that they could do something about the issue and convey their sentiments to an erring government, she added.
“A businessman stopped me here and said, 'Please tell the people that lawmakers are worse than Judas Iscariot, because Judas betrayed only one man. These people have betrayed a million Filipinos',” said Monsod.
However, the remark is just one of the many versions and variations uttered to express disenchantment with a system that allows politicians to spend money with very little, if at all, accountability.
So what happens next after Monday's countrywide protests?
Miriam College associate professor Raul Alejandrino, who was at the march with three jeep-loads of faculty, students, parents, and members of the school's partner communities, said that the campaign for a resolution to the issue would continue with the help of the very entities that started it all: social networking sites.
As more evidence is uncovered by the Department of Justice, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the media [regarding the misuse of pork barrel funds], taxpayers will continue to rage against the plunder of taxpayers' money, said Alejandrino.
He added that Filipinos should encourage the staff of the lawmakers involved to become whistleblowers themselves and reveal the truth.
“Imagine if that reaches social media. Not only will the people stay angry, they'll grow even angrier,” he said.
Journalism professor and foreign correspondent Alan Robles agrees.
“This is a practical demonstration that the Internet really has an effect on organizing citizens' power,” said Robles, who teaches at the International Institute for Journalism in Berlin. "[It proved wrong the politicians who] have always said they're snotty to the Internet. It's all talk. All you do is post, put pictures on Facebook, and share on Twitter.”
It was also proof that the Internet, which makes sharing of information simultaneous, can lead to a mass protest. Especially when driven by public fury.
“We feel the need to share, and we share not just pictures, not just experiences, but sentiments. And when those sentiments happen to consist of anger, in this case anger generated by YouTube videos showing excessive lifestyles, then that can go somewhere,” said Robles.
The march came to life because Filipinos, as a people, love to share and socialize. Whether it's sustainable or not remains to be seen, however. There are two things that may come out of it, he explained.
“The first is, people get tired of these things. There is that possibility. The other aspect, which we haven't seen yet, is that the sentiment can be sustained online because people can keep in touch with each other and they can use it to feed information even if they're not physically massing on the streets. If you want to be hopeful, then you look at that aspect. That people will sustain it online even if they're not on the streets, and they're ready to do it again,” he said.
The very first action he had seen that was organized completely on the Internet, and what more, from the ground up, did not exactly send a million trooping to the streets. However, the number was still impressive compared to what would have resulted when the call to protest was done “the old analog way, by sending out flyers, phone calls, and perhaps, text messages.”
“You can really bring out thousands and thousands using the Internet,” said Robles, also a correspondent for the South China Morning Post.
Monday’s protest bears this out.
It resulted in at least 60,000 people—many of them politically-unaffiliated Filipinos—coming out on the streets; a move that came about because of just one Facebook status update.
