Philippines Sunday Express/1972/09/24/Nation is calm; business, life go on normally

There was some amount of apprehension early in the day, caused by the absence of the usual morning papers in the streets; the silence of most radio and television; and the reports of domestic travellers who had gone to the airport and discovered that all flights had been suspended indefinitely.

As the day wore on, however, this apprehension seemed to have dissolved into the day's chores. And the principal reason must have been the conspicuous scarcity of soldiers in the city's main thoroughfares, where traffic continued to be directed by a handful of Manila policemen. During the day, traffic was, as usual, intolerable. It would peak later in the afternoon, as people hurried home to listen to the presidential proclamation, and subside early in the evening, when shopping centers which saw normal business during the day started to close up.

There was heavy buying in some supermarkets, but that is usual on Saturdays. Banco Filipino, one of the few savings banks which open on Saturdays, posted notice at ten o'clock in the morning that it was suspending operations on account of the "uncertain situation." By and large, however, the people seem to have adapted themselves readily to the situation. This much the Express gathered after a day-long survey of the Greater Manila area.

In front of ABS-CBN on Bohol Avenue, Quezon City, a few girls swarmed in front of the gate, shyly asking the marines in command what seemed to be the matter, for Saturdays in ABS-CBN are usually alive beyond belief. They were politely informed that the studios had been closed.

Nearby, a few executives of the network huddled, analyzing the situation. They said that the place was sealed at two o'clock the previous evening. Their faces expressed regret, but Choy Arnaldo, the anchorman of the award-winning television series Sandigan,

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probably voiced their sentiments when he said that in one day, the people seemed to have adapted to martial law. Some had doubted this, he added, but that was before martial law was declared and the people did not know what it would be like.

At the University of the Philippines in Diliman, a few students walked aimlessly. In front of Vinzons Hall, a big streamer which had been pegged to the grounds read: Boldly assert your rights. The statue itself of Bonifacio was surprisingly free of the usual red-lettered encumbrances. Some troopers, however, were deployed in front of the College of Engineering which houses DZUP.

Earlier in the day, there had been rumors that some university students had put up a resistance. Like most rumors, these had no basis. The sound of automatic gunfire which had been heard in the area at about 3:00 A.M. came from the exchange of gunfire between troopers and the security guards of the Iglesia ni Kristo compound just off Commonwealth Avenue.

In Marikina, the same atmosphere of normalcy existed. Near the foot of the Marikina bridge, PC soldiers and civilians teased one another good-naturedly, and martial law certainly seemed to be farthest from the minds of the roaring hundreds who packed the town's cockpit stadium, situated at the other end of the bridge; themselves cousins of the many aficionados who continued to follow the results of the Santa Ana races over the radio during the day, and the limousine-driven manicured customers of the nightspots on Roxas Boulevard who emerged even before the full moon was up.

For a week-end, there certainly were few strollers at the Rizal Park, where Mr. Valencia's fountain continued to gush up apolitically. But then, it had rained quite a bit during the afternoon, and part of the usual crowd had evidently elected to go and see instead the samurai-cum-cowboy film showing in a nearby theater which, like most of Greater Manila's many moviehouses, seemed to be doing the usual brisk week-end business.

The closest the city got to witnessing a running battle between the military and the civilians was in the downtown area, where troopers armed with scissors pursued squealing and protesting long-haired youths with a vengeance.

Otherwise, everything was pretty much like it used to be, and as the campy expression goes, "Anong say mo, Marcelo?"