For this day, the anniversary of the EDSA people’s uprising, government beginning at the wee hours of the morning, blocked off all vehicular traffic on EDSA and officially rerouted tens of thousands of motorists to side streets, in order to use EDSA for assemblies  led by the President himself on commemorative activities. This afternoon,  a mere eight hours after government used the same space and while EDSA is still declared closed to vehicular traffic by  government, it is  prohibiting marchers of various partylist and people’s organizations from using EDSA to form a narrow parallel “human chain” (parallel to traffic, not across), by blocking them with the use of hundreds of baton-wielding police forces. 

       This is a form of CONTENT-BASED RESTRICTION  frowned upon by the Constitution. “Content-based restriction” means that the speech or form of expression, or exercise of right, is being prohibited not because it poses any kind of danger to the public, but because of the substance of the message being conveyed – in other words, because government disagrees with the idea being espoused.  

       It is quite graphically content-based because the government has already created a temporary one-day-long “freedom space” on EDSA for its own activities by blocking all vehicular traffic, to propagate its own message, yet it would prohibit, or has effectivelly prohibited rallyists from using the same space,  simply because the message of the rallyists is not in agreement with own message.

      How “content-based” can you get? 

      In other words — hinahadlangan ng pamahalaan ang pamamahayag hindi dahil sa mapanganib ito o “magulo” ang mga nagtipon (at mapayapa rin naman ang pagkilos nila) , kundi dahil sa hindi sang-ayon ang mga nasa pamahalaan sa ipinapahayag nila. Ito ang ibig sabihin ng content-based restriction at ito ay labag sa saligang batas.
While the aggrieved parties may not be able to get a court order in time, or promptly enough, for the duration of the assembly today, they could try administrative remedies thru the local governments of the contiguous cities – EDSA cuts across at least five cities.