Student Faces Criminal Charges for Disrupting Philippine President’s Speech on Independence Day

Philippine President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III was delivering his Independence Day speech when somebody from the crowd shouted: “Oust the pork barrel king! There’s no change in the Philippines!”

The person who disrupted the president’s speech was student leader Emmanuel Pio Mijares. The president was speechless for a brief moment, as the Chronicle of Carlos recounts:

It was not the usual platitudes at the podium by the President, who seemed to be caught off guard during his Independence Day speech in Naga City by a brief chanting some 40 feet away. The words “Patalsikin ang pork barrel king! Walang pagbabago sa Pilipinas” rang through the mass of civil bodies and involuntarily filled in the two-second gap. In that brief moment, 19-year-old Ateneo de Naga student Emmanuel Pio Mijares seemed to deliver a dagger that disrupted Aquino’s thoughts and disturbed his imagined peace.

Read more: globalvoicesonline.org Written by Karlo Mikhail Mongaya