Peaceful, yes, but orderly?
The description by Sinulog Foundation Inc. (SFI) executive director Ricky Ballesteros and Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 Chief Noli Taliño of Sunday’s Sinulog festivities as peaceful is correct considering that no major criminal incident occurred especially during the grand parade. But it would be another thing to say that order prevailed in the holding of the whole-day activities.
The change in the conduct of the grand parade may have helped. By starting and ending the dancing before sundown, or shortening the entire activity, law enforcers were in a better position for maintaining the peace. Still, there were instances of petty thievery, which should be a concern if the police want to ensure these would go out of fashion next year.
A longer grand parade is tiresome for law enforcers and for so-called force multipliers that include National Student Training Program (NSTP) students and affects their ability to maintain the peace. That is why in past Sinulog grand parades, the grip of law enforcers and the force multipliers on the activity always loosened up as darkness set in, which was dangerous. Their ability to, say, go after hooligans weakened.
That’s why to say that the conduct of the activities was orderly this year is stretching things a bit. That can be said of the flow of the grand parade’s program, but not necessarily the control of the crowd, especially after the Sinulog grand parade and when many law enforcers and the force multipliers had called it a day.
Traffic, for example, continued to be a mess in many streets long after the dancing ended. Even in previous Sinulog grand parades, the problem has always been to untangle the jumble of people and vehicles seeking control of the streets where traffic was closed hours before. Then there were those who made light of the ban on street parties and drunkenness.
This is not to downplay the effort of the police and the Sinulog organizers to ensure that the conduct of the Sinulog festivities would be peaceful and orderly. Their effort was admirable. It’s just that with events of this magnitude, a big part is played by the people in making the activity orderly.