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