The People’s Voice Is Always Harsher

The law may be harsh, but in the Philippines, it is never harsh on everyone equally. It is ruthless, it comes down hardest on the poor, the young, and the ordinary Filipino who dares to speak, to protest, to simply demand fairness yet merciful to politicians pocketing billions.

Fifty-three years after the Martial Law swallowed our freedoms, the Trillion Peso March at Luneta on September 21 proved laws are not unbreakable shields—they are swords in some hands and shields for none. Thousands gathered to protest corruption in flood control projects, but the state bent its laws to arrest minors, silence bystanders, and trample the rights of voices held high. They say dura lex, sed lex, which means the law may be harsh, but it is the law. I say: that old line rings hollow when the law bends only one way.

On that Sunday, Manila Police District arrested 216 people, 89 of them were minors, for alleged violence such as throwing stones, destroying property, and burning tires. GMA News reported 95 police officers were injured. According to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), a viral video showed a SWAT officer dragging a minor to a hotel and attacking him. GMA confirmed their own probe into media harassment and dubious uses of force. These are not “isolated missteps.” They echo decades of selective enforcement and punishment of dissenters while impunity walks free.

Some defend the crackdown, arguing that protesters turned violent—that laws protect property and the public order. PNP claims many detainees committed wrongdoing. Philstar’s reporting puts the number of arrests at 244, including 103 minors, with police seeking charges like arson, malicious mischief, resistance, and direct assault. But laws are not supposed to hang innocence on guilt by association. The law demands due process, demands that minors be protected under the juvenile justice laws; demands that journalists are allowed to report freely. If we let violence—real or alleged—justify sweeping arrests, we turn “harsh law” into a blanket that smothers justice.

Amnesty International Philippines called for an impartial investigation, saying police used The Child Rights Network likewise condemned these incidents, stressing that many of those affected were not even protesters but bystanders. Journalists were blocked, photo-journalists threatened with batons, obstructed from covering the event, prompting the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) to raise the alarm. These abuses turn protector into predator, law into tool for fear.

So what does it mean when law bends? It means the mere act of holding a phone can brand a child a criminal. It means the click of a camera shutter can be treated as an act of defiance. It means anger—justified, collective, and righteous—is twisted into a crime against the state. Law may be written, but we are the ones who breathe its purpose into life—or let it rot in its unread promises.

And if law is bent toward fear, then our duty is not to whisper reforms but to shout resistance. CHR must expose the full weight of these abuses, not bury them in reports. The minors dragged from streets must be freed with apologies, not excuses. Police who bloodied protesters and silenced journalists must be dragged before the courts they claim to defend. Because until there is consequence, “law” is nothing but paper, and “order” nothing but the sound of boots on broken ground.

If dura lex, sed lex ever had truth, it was never about blind obedience to statutes—it was about the duty to reclaim the law when it is weaponized against us. On September 21, the law did not protect; it punished. It did not uphold order; it manufactured silence. But laws are not sacred stones. They are clay, and in our hands they can harden into either a shield for the people or a blade for their rulers.

The law bent on September 21—but what bent with it was not only the rights of those arrested, but the credibility of a government that claims to protect. By dismissing the violence as mere “crowd control,” and with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) quick to shield the police instead of confronting their abuses, the state once again showed that its instinct is not to protect its people but to protect its power. The rally was meant to demand answers for corruption in flood control projects, yet the narrative was buried under headlines of chaos and criminality. In the end, what was silenced was not only the chants at Luneta, but the very purpose of protest: to hold leaders accountable for stealing what belongs to the people.

To allow the law to remain bent toward tyranny is to admit that justice is optional, that freedom is negotiable, that rights are privileges dispensed by power. That cannot stand. The voices silenced in Luneta must echo louder in every street, classroom, and newsroom until accountability is not a plea but a reckoning.

What was proven that day is what was proven 53 years ago—the law bends easily in the hands of power, and it breaks hardest on the powerless. Our duty now is clear: to bend it back, fierce, relentless, uncompromising. Dura lex, sed vox populi—the law may be harsh, but the people’s voice is always harsher.

And you may ask: if the people’s voice is truly harsher than the law, why does corruption still hide behind endless “investigations”? The answer is not that voices fail, but that power survives on delay. Every reckoning begins with an outcry, but it must grow into pressure, and pressure into accountability. Plunderers thrive by waiting for outrage to fade, by betting on our fatigue. But history shows delay is never immunity. When voices refuse to scatter, when anger hardens into action, even the thickest walls of impunity crack.

Never again is not nostalgia; it is resistance. Never forget is not ritual; it is revolt.

Article: Ariane Claire Galpao

Cartoon: Allaine Arcaya