MANILA, Phililppines — A day before President Aquino’s last State of the Nation Address (SONA), violence already broke out between police and protesters in Quezon City.
Supt. Christian de la Cruz, the Masambong police commander, alleged that leftist groups who were holding a pre-SONA protest near the Aquino home on Times street on Sunday, became “unruly” and ended up injuring four policemen.
De la Cruz said protesters led by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) from the southern Tagalog region, who had been holding a demonstration on Times street at the corner of West avenue, started trying to push past the police barricade on Times street at around 1 p.m.
De la Cruz said three personnel of the Metro Manila public safety battalion, namely Police Officers 1 John Robert Cornelio, Crizzel Cerrera, and Gretchen King, and one member of the Masambong police
station, Police Officer 2 Joel Lagahit, had to be rushed to the hospital for treatment of injuries sustained from the scuffle.
De la Cruz, in a text message to the media, said they would file complaints against the protesters.
Sought for comment, PJ Santos of the Bayan southern Tagalog countered the police narration of events, although he admitted that the protesters had tried to remove the barricade as an act of “defiance” and “intensified protests” for Aquino’s last Sona.
“But the [police] were the ones who were armed. Some of our members were hit [with batons] on their hands,” he described.
Santos said the Bayan southern Tagalog members had conducted the protest “to show that conditions in southern Tagalog have not changed [under the Aquino administration]. The status of farmers and laborers remain the same. Militarization has intensified, as well as prosecution of activists,” Santos said.
The protesters also made a show of eating simple lunches in plastic bags, to criticize the reported expense of P2 million for snacks at the SONA.
Lagahit, when interviewed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer as he was filing his physical assault complaint in Camp Karingal, had an ugly gash on his right elbow.
He said when protesters pushed at the iron fence barricade on Times St, he and other police personnel got trapped in front of the chained barricade behind them.
Some police personnel ended up knocked to the pavement, sustaining gashes on their limbs.
At least six also lost their riot shields to the protesters, Lagahit said.