Dr. Jose Antonio "Ka Pep" Goitia responds to an unpermitted rally that paralyzed EDSA, arguing that constitutional rights must be exercised with responsibility and respect for the rule of law.
A City Brought to a Standstill
It was not a typhoon. It was not a fire. It was not a national emergency of any conventional kind. Yet for hours, Metro Manila’s most vital artery came to a halt, not because of disaster, but because of a mass rally that authorities said proceeded without the required permit. Workers arrived late or missed shifts entirely. Students struggled to reach their schools. Patients trying to get to appointments were delayed. Delivery riders and small vendors, whose daily income depends on the city moving, lost hours of earnings they will not recover.
For Dr. Jose Antonio “Ka Pep” Goitia, the disruption raised a question that goes beyond the specific rally itself, though it was that rally that prompted him to address it directly. “The issue goes beyond politics or religion,” he said. “At its core, it is a test of whether constitutional rights are exercised with responsibility and respect for the rule of law.”
Two Rights in Tension
The Philippine Constitution guarantees the right to peaceable assembly. It does not guarantee that assembly the right to proceed without regard for permitting requirements, public safety coordination, or the disruption caused to people who have no part in the cause being advanced. Goitia’s framing treats these as two legitimate interests that must be balanced, not as a contest between a sacred right and an inconvenient technicality.
“For hours, major roads, particularly EDSA, were paralyzed,” Goitia noted, cataloguing the specific costs. Workers, students, patients, commuters, delivery riders, and small businesses, in his accounting, all paid a price for an event in which they had no part. This is not an argument against the right to assemble. It is an argument that the exercise of that right carries obligations to the people who are not exercising it alongside you.
Due Process Cuts Both Ways
Goitia was equally clear that defending due process is not the same as defending wrongdoing. “Allegations must be resolved by evidence and the courts,” he said, “not by political pressure or public opinion.” This principle applies in both directions. It means the organizers of an unpermitted rally are entitled to due process in whatever legal consequences follow. It also means that the public inconvenienced by the rally is entitled to have the permitting rules actually enforced, rather than treated as optional whenever an organization has sufficient size or influence to disregard them.
This even-handedness is a consistent feature of Goitia’s civic commentary. He has been willing to defend institutions when he believes they are being unfairly maligned, as in his response to “failed state” rhetoric, and equally willing to hold institutions and organizations to account when they fail to follow the rules that apply to everyone else.
No Organization Is Above the Law
Perhaps the sharpest line in Goitia’s response was this: “A democracy cannot endure if any organization, regardless of its size, influence, or religious affiliation, believes it may disregard legal processes or impose unnecessary hardship on the public in pursuit of its cause.”
This is a deliberately broad standard. It does not carve out exceptions for causes Goitia might personally sympathize with, nor does it single out any particular group. The principle he is articulating is procedural rather than partisan: legal processes exist to balance competing interests, and no single interest, however righteous its cause may feel to its adherents, gets to unilaterally decide that its priorities override everyone else’s.”
Rights and Responsibilities, Inseparable
Goitia’s closing framing captures the core of his argument. “Rights and responsibilities are inseparable,” he said. “When one is exercised without the other, both democracy and the rule of law are diminished.”
This is not a call for fewer rights or weaker protections for assembly and expression. It is a call for the exercise of those rights to be paired with an honest reckoning of their costs to others, and for the legal processes that govern that balance, permitting requirements, coordination with local authorities, and accountability when those processes are ignored, to be applied consistently, regardless of who is doing the organizing. A functioning democracy depends on both halves of that equation holding.