Organizers of the demonstrations on the day of President Rodrigo Duterte’s final State of the Nation Address (SONA) promised that health standards would be strictly observed among them.

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte met with the QC Police District and several progressive groups on Saturday, July 24, and all parties agreed to put a premium on COVID-19 protocols during the programs planned by demonstrators.

“We confirm that we had a meeting with Mayor Belmonte today where assurances were made that Monday’s protests will be peaceful. We gave the [local government] a copy of our standard health protocols for protest actions,” Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes said. 

A plan of the organizers’ health protocols was one of the requirements set by Belmonte when it approved the holding of rallies.

Other conditions set by the city government for the organizers include:

• Submission of names and contact details of all rally participants to the City Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit for contact tracing;
• Abiding by the city ordinances and doing away with any program along Commonwealth Avenue to avoid disrupting traffic flow;
• Shortened programs at assembly areas to reduce COVID-19 exposure;
• And forbidding minors and senior citizens, even if fully vaccinated, from joining the rallies.

“We have an existing health crisis made more volatile by the presence of the highly infectious Delta variant in Metro Manila. It is everyone’s civic duty to adhere to minimum health standards and limited mobility,” Belmonte said in a statement.

Updated plans

Reyes said progressive groups will assemble at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman at 9 am on Monday. A previous announcement by rally organizers said mobilization would begin along Commonwealth Avenue at around 9 am.

Monday’s SONA protests will be the first to be conducted after the Duterte administration terminated the 1989 accord barring state forces from entering UP campuses without notifying the school administration.

Protest organizers are unfazed by this.

“The UP community, the students, faculty, employees, and residents stand with the people on July 26. They will protect the protesters. We are in close coordination with the [school] administration, mindful of the current health and political situation,” Reyes told Rappler on Sunday, July 25.

After the assembly at the UP grounds, demonstrators will march to Commonwealth Avenue at 11 am. The city government said all parties agreed that the march would not extend beyond St. Peter’s Chapels along Tandang Sora.

Aside from Bayan, other progressive groups expected to lead Monday’s protests include Akbayan, Sentro, Sanlakas, and Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino – groups which also met with Belmonte and QC Police Chief General Antonio Yarra during Saturday’s meeting.

Duterte’s sixth SONA is the second to be held against the backdrop of an ongoing health crisis.

In 2020, police encouraged opposition groups to hold online rallies instead, but that did not stop protesters from braving the threat of COVID-19 and taking their dissent to the streets over Duterte’s mishandling of the pandemic.

“Duterte drives the people to protest even during the pandemic,” Reyes said on Saturday. “On his last SONA, after more than five years of fascist rule, we say ‘No more!” – Rappler.com