Members of the religious group Iglesia ni Cristo stage a demonstration along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Quezon City, Metro Manila. (AFP pic)
MANILA: Thousands of members of a powerful Philippine religious sect rallied in Manila today, snarling traffic as they protested the expected arrest of a senator and church member.
The rally came a day after authorities announced that senator Rodante Marcoleta, a member of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) church and an ally of vice-president Sara Duterte, was set to be charged with graft tied to his election campaign fund.
The INC has historically been a powerful voting bloc with ties to the Duterte political dynasty, and Marcoleta is widely viewed as an all-but-certain vote against convicting Duterte at her Senate impeachment trial, which begins next week.
Protesters who spoke with AFP said they had been contacted by organisers at around 9pm the night before via text, phone calls and messages on the Telegram platform.
“This is a lightning protest. As you know, the Iglesia ni Cristo is just one body. With just one command, everybody will follow,” 56-year-old Rodel Gundrean told AFP.
Church member Marc Raeden Quemada, 26, said he had been at the protest since 6am and did not plan to leave “until we’re told to go home”.
As of 2pm, traffic remained bottle-necked in the area, with police estimating a crowd of about 12,000.
“We’re expecting the number of people will still increase… so there might still be traffic tonight,” regional police spokeswoman Hazel Asilo told AFP.
Government ombudsman Jesus Remulla on Monday revealed that Marcoleta was set to be charged over a failure to declare ₱75 million (US$1.2 million) in unused election campaign contributions.
A month earlier, prosecutors filed charges against another Duterte loyalist, senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, over his alleged involvement in a massive corruption scandal over bogus flood control projects.
A third Duterte ally, senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, is in hiding after narrowly escaping arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant over his role in the deadly drug war conducted by the vice-president’s father, ex-president Rodrigo Duterte.
‘Selective justice’
In a video message ahead of Tuesday’s rally, INC spokesman Edwil Zabala said the church was calling for “transparency” in standing by Marcoleta.
“We want to let them know that selective justice is an injustice and we will not remain silent,” he said.
Vice-president Duterte issued a separate statement saying president Ferdinand Marcos’s administration had “weaponised the justice system by filing cases against and imprisoning individuals who dare speak out against alleged corruption”.
In November, the INC rallied a crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands, calling for accountability over the flood control scandal while placing most of the blame on Marcos.
Earlier in 2025, the church held a huge rally in Manila opposing the mooted impeachment of Duterte.
While that impeachment was reversed by the country’s Supreme Court, Duterte was impeached once again by the House of Representatives last month.
Her trial is set to begin on July 6, with 16 votes in the 24-seat Senate required for a guilty verdict that would see her removed as vice president and permanently banned from elected office.
On Tuesday, president Marcos cancelled all events outside the presidential palace to monitor the situation.
