This is a frequent complaint against rallies: That protest actions snarl traffic flow and inconvenience motorists and commuters.

I agree.

And that’s partly why rallyists are required by law to inform authorities about their demonstrations.

The police and other law enforcers are mandated by law to react appropriately, but not to disrupt/attack the rallyists. The mandate is to respect their rights to free expression and to free assembly, and at the same time undertake measures to ease traffic flow at the perimeter of the demonstration site.

For instance, the Makati City government, for instance, reroutes traffic to give way to the rallies along Ayala Avenue.

In Hong Kong, not only is traffic flow rerouted, but the police directly coordinate with and assist rally organizers to ensure the latter’s plans are followed to the letter. I personally witnessed this in 2005, when Bayan led Philippine protests against the WTO ministerial conference.

Here in the country, our policemen hate rallies, period. They demand rallyists to obtain permits, but most often oppose the issuance of permits citing traffic snarls and public inconvenience. This is the oft-repeated reason behind the rally ban at Mendiola.

There is also no effort to assist motorists during rallies. But the authorities spare no expense and effort to bring container vans for placement on Mendiola Bridge, or reassign hundreds/thousands of cops from nearby provinces to “protect” the President from some threat.

(Speaking of Mendiola, I’ve been to dozens, perhaps more than a hundred (!), rallies held at the historic Mendiola. Never did I see violence similar to the massacre of peasants in 1987 or to the May 1 siege of 2001. Rallies held there by Bayan and its member-organizations were all generally peaceful and orderly. Why Mendiola? Because the bridge symbolizes the yawning gap between the government and the governed. It is where the people traditionally present and express their grievances to the Chief Executive who hold court at the other side of the bridge. Now that Arroyo has banned rallies there, we could safely say that she does not care about the public’s grievances and would rather stick it out at the Palace, isolated from the people.

As I was going to Liwasang Bonifacio for today’s rally, there were only a handful of policemen in the streets. No rerouting plans were unveiled to assist motorists. It seems the police are agitating the people to get angry at the rallyists — and they’re doing this by not doing their jobs of maintaining street order. Most of the cops I saw were sitting and chatting beside makeshift desks in front of the Metropolitan Theater.

Meanwhile, when administration supporters stage rallies, no such complaints could be heard from the police. They don’t even go to the motions of pretending to check whether these groups have permits. Example: the pro-Arroyo Kongreso ng Mamamayan has recently been pitching camp at Welcome Rotonda, sometimes for several days. Nobody knows whether they have permits.

The authorities’ cavalier attitude towards public expression a.k.a. rallies is very bad in the long run. It demeans the right to free expression and cheapens our civil liberties. All because the President doesn’t want to see the truth that people reject her immoral leadership.