TENS of thousands of motorists and commuters were stuck for hours in horrendous traffic jams on June 30, after the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) staged a lightning protest rally at the People Power Monument on EDSA.
With no permit, the INC protesters used the vehicles that bused them in to block the main thoroughfare, causing misery to the thousands of people trying to pass through the EDSA-Ortigas-Quezon City corridor. Online public sentiment quickly turned to anger and frustration over the severe gridlock and unannounced road closures — and the religious sect that brought about the chaos.
It was a misfire of epic proportions and a public relations disaster.
To explain the lightning rally to the public, an INC spokesman said protesters were rallying against “selective justice” and political persecution, after the Office of the Ombudsman announced that it would file plunder charges against Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, a member of the sect who had admitted to accepting P75 million in donations from private individuals.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration, the INC said, is weaponizing the law against political opponents and critics while shielding its own political allies from investigations.
The spokesman also questioned the legitimacy of the plunder charges, arguing that they were an unfair attack designed to lead to Marcoleta’s immediate imprisonment without bail. There is no plunder, he said, because no public funds were stolen.
The spokesman asserted that the mass demonstration was not a rejection of the law itself, but a demand for true parity and fairness. He claimed his group is championing transparency, justice and peace for the Filipino people.
But each of these assertions can be handily debunked using statutory laws, constitutional mandates and real-world developments.
Contrary to what the INC suggests, plunder applies to private funds if they are acquired by a public official. While the public often associates plunder (Republic Act 7080) exclusively with stealing taxpayer money, the law explicitly includes taking or receiving assets, gifts, or percentages from any private person in connection with their government office.
Moreover, once a public official receives P75 million and fails to declare it in their statement of assets, liabilities and net worth, as Marcoleta did, the law treats it as unexplained, ill-gotten wealth. Because the statutory threshold for plunder is P50 million, an undeclared P75 million immediately crosses the legal threshold for a nonbailable plunder charge, regardless of its original source.
The spokesman pointed out that the Commission on Elections had already reviewed Marcoleta’s campaign donations and ruled that no election offense was committed. But Comelec rulings on election offenses do not clear an official of criminal corruption. An election offense is entirely separate from criminal liability for graft, bribery, or plunder.
The spokesman also questioned why Marcoleta, who once headed the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and exposed corruption in government flood-control projects, was being targeted. But the law does not shield lawmakers from criminal prosecution, not even those who investigate corruption. Acting as a congressional investigator or exposing other anomalies does not absolve a lawmaker of his own independent legal violations.
Furthermore, the Office of the Ombudsman is a constitutionally independent body entirely separate from the presidency. Its duty is to follow the evidence, not political narratives. Demanding that an active investigation be dropped because the suspect is an anti-corruption advocate is a contradiction — true accountability means that everyone, including the investigators, must be subject to the law.
Marcoleta’s legal woes have not stopped the prosecution of those involved in the flood-control bribery scandal. In fact, two high-profile figures have already been charged and arrested: former senator Bong Revilla, who ran but lost in the last Senate race as a member of the administration ticket, and Sen. Jinggoy Estrada.
Despite the massive traffic gridlock the lightning rally created, the Quezon City government granted the INC a permit to continue its rally for a second day. Attendance on July 1, however, dropped sharply, from 14,000 protesters at the peak of the first day to only about 5,000 on the second. If the INC had hoped to trigger spontaneous mass protests against the government, it failed miserably. And if this was supposed to be a show of force, it was quite the opposite, exposing the limits of the INC’s vaunted political clout.
In the end, the INC rally converted nobody who did not already subscribe to its views and its support for politicians who are firmly in the camp of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who is now detained in The Hague awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. All it did was anger the public and damage its own image.
