Overview

• City estimates put nearly 50,000 people at Manila’s Luneta Park with thousands more at EDSA and parallel rallies nationwide, backed by Catholic Church leaders.
• Police reported isolated violence near Malacañang, deploying water cannon and making dozens of arrests, with injuries on both sides after rock-throwing and a barricade fire.
• President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said he understood the public anger and called for peaceful protests as security forces moved to heightened alert.
• Political fallout has widened with House Speaker Martin Romualdez and Senate President Francis Escudero resigning, while several public works engineers were dismissed and faced asset freezes.
• Roughly 9,855 flood-control projects worth about 545 billion pesos are under scrutiny, and the finance department estimates losses of up to 118.5 billion pesos from 2023 to 2025.