Government Notes Irony of Canceling Police Leave on Labor Day to Secure Labor Day; Government Does Not Find This Funny
From Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
MANILA — In what social scientists are classifying as the most efficient demonstration of irony the Philippine National Police has produced this fiscal year, authorities confirmed Thursday that over 106,000 policemen would receive no work suspension for Labor Day, as they were needed to secure the Labor Day celebrations of the workers who did receive work suspension.
PNP Chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. called the sacrifice “commendable,” which is one way to describe working on a holiday designed to honor the dignity of labor, and which 106,000 officers have received as a compliment with the specific expression of people who have received compliments in lieu of holidays before.
What the Police Were Securing
The events requiring 106,000 police officers included Labor Day rallies along Espaa Boulevard, where thousands of workers marched calling for higher wages and lower prices of basic goods. The protesters carried placards. The police secured the placards. Both groups were technically working. One group was doing so voluntarily and with chanted slogans. The other group was doing so under orders and without chanted slogans, though sources suggest some officers had opinions.
The rally, organized by Kilusang Mayo Uno and allied organizations, centered on the call ‘Sahod itaas, presyo ibaba’ — raise wages, lower prices — which protesters directed at the government. The government responded by deploying personnel who are themselves affected by the conditions being protested, which is a governance structure that produces the specific efficiency of a meeting in which all parties agree on the problem and disagree on whether the meeting is the right venue for addressing it.
The Barricade Logistics
Authorities installed barricades along key routes leading to Malacanang Palace, blocking the protesters’ route along Recto Avenue toward Mendiola. The Eastern Police District deployed 1,139 personnel in the eastern portion of Metro Manila, with 501 specifically designated for Civil Disturbance Management at EDSA Shrine.
Civil Disturbance Management is a classification that sounds like event planning and functions like event planning, in the sense that its primary activity is the management of crowds at scheduled public gatherings, with the significant difference that event planners typically want their events to proceed and Civil Disturbance Management units are prepared for events not to.
The Traffic Situation
The rally filled both lanes of Espaa Boulevard, bringing traffic to a standstill. The traffic standstill on a Labor Day, which is a non-working holiday for most workers, affected commuters who were traveling despite it being a non-working holiday, because Metro Manila’s relationship with non-working holidays is that some people observe them and others observe them from a jeepney that is stuck behind a motorcycle with flags attached to it.
Traffic authorities said the situation was manageable. Traffic in Metro Manila is always described as manageable. This description persists regardless of the traffic. It is the most durable piece of public communication in the Philippine transportation sector.
What Happens After Labor Day
Labor and progressive groups vowed to continue their calls for reforms beyond Labor Day, a commitment that the Manila Bulletin noted was made annually and that observers noted was also annually noted. The demands for wage increases and lower prices are structural problems that require policy changes of a type that Labor Day marches document but do not themselves produce. The documentation is real. The march is meaningful. The wages, as of press time, remain where they were when the march began. The prices similarly.
The police report to work tomorrow. Some of them were at the rally securing the people who were calling for higher wages, which they also need. This is the specific Filipino circular economy of Labor Day, which produces solidarity, logistics, and traffic in roughly equal measure.
More Philippine satire: NewsThump.
The Labor Day dynamic — labor organized enough to march, organized enough to be secured, and not organized enough to produce the policy changes the march demands — is the annual demonstration of the limits of protest as a legislative tool in a political system where the relationship between street pressure and congressional action is mediated by electoral cycles, factional dynamics, and the specific cost-benefit calculations of legislators whose constituencies include but are not limited to the workers on Espaa Boulevard. The march is real. The demands are legitimate. The policy response comes through channels that move slower than the march but faster than the silence. This is Philippine democracy operating: noisy, imperfect, and running.
The Philippines continues. The agencies sign agreements. The commissions announce adjustments. The weather comes. The workers march. The bridges get repaired and the railings get replaced and the next thing happens after the last thing. This is the Filipino political and economic cycle, running at the pace of a nation that is too large and too complex and too much in the middle of everything for any single development to be the last development before things are resolved. Things are never resolved. Things are managed. The management is the story, told in press briefings and senate hearings and barangay meetings and the specific silence of people waiting for the next bill to confirm what the announcement promised. The country keeps moving. The next announcement is already being drafted.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/