We thus find ourselves locked in primal “zero-sum” games where one’s gain is the other’s loss. It is a metaphor for our national troubles.
Then the gridlock formed again, trapping stupid creatures that could not see beyond their narrow lenses. Traffic flowed, but only for a few minutes. Everyone stewed in his vehicle until one heroic person got off his cage and disentangled the web. There were no traffic enforcers in sight. Traffic lights were working, but were willfully ignored. Every intersection we came into, without exception, was gridlocked. The return trip to Quezon City was even more formidable. But, the meeting could not start because almost everyone was at least one or two hours late. Roxas Boulevard itself was transformed into one long parking lot. Jeeps and buses that had ferried INC members into the city were parked on both sides of this busy highway.
Gridlock jeep driver#
Armed with the MMDA Metro Manila Traffic Navigator app, our driver avoided Edsa and C-5, picking his way through Makati’s side streets until we could rejoin the crawling traffic on Quirino Avenue. I was on my way to a lunch meeting at the Ramon Magsaysay Building on Roxas Boulevard, having left the UP campus in Quezon City at 9:30 a.m. I got a good glimpse of this last Tuesday morning. A frazzled public forced by the standstill traffic to alight from their buses and jeepneys and walk in the afternoon sun might have understood what this event was about if it were held on July 27, the day Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo set aside as “Iglesia ni Cristo Day.”īut whatever it is that prompted the usually reserved INC to troop to Luneta to show its mobilizing capacity, the impact it created reminds us of the power of crowds to paralyze the city. Those who planned last Tuesday’s gigantic “evangelical” gathering at the Quirino Grandstand, a favored site for important political events, could not have been oblivious of the disruption it would cause to the city’s weekday routine. The INC seldom holds prayer services outside its own neo-Gothic churches. More than these, it is the circumstances surrounding the event that have triggered all kinds of speculations. Finally, what is one supposed to make of the presence at the prayer rally of Supreme Court spokesperson Midas Marquez, a vocal partisan for Corona? He is not an INC member, and neither is he known as an advocate of prayer assemblies. The INC neither denied sending in the demonstrators, nor did it take the opportunity to distance itself from the impeachment. Media reported that the demonstrators were members of the INC. Also, a few weeks ago, a small placard-bearing crowd rallied in front of the Supreme Court to express its support for Corona. The religious affiliation of INC stalwart Serafin Cuevas, the embattled Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona’s lead counsel, has been in the public mind from the start of the trial. The political spin nevertheless persists because it is not without basis.
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