It was a wrong response to turn around the crisis, the root of which is the President's corruption, incompetence and mismanagement of the economy. The statements of Reyes and Lacson were orchestrated. It is as though they were reading from a prepared script. They were being used to back up with threats the administration's dangerous point of view that the constitutional mode to address the call for resignation was the impeachment process now under way in Congress. He is channeling the demand for his resignation into the impeachment venue because the House remains one of the few mechanisms of political control available to him and the House majority can strangle the impeachment complaint.
Resignation is also within the constitutional ambit.
Should the Armed Forces and police commands take this point of view which considers people power as illegal and unconstitutional as demonstrations multiply, then there will be turbulence in the streets. Surely, they now have the experience to execute that option. Alexander Aguirre, the national security adviser of the President, warns that the civil disobedience campaign urged by former President Aquino could be illegal. People power and civil disobedience are acts of last resort available to the people to exercise their sovereign right to dismiss leaders who have lost their confidence. If the formal mechanisms of removal are rigged, such as the impeachment process, then sovereign people are driven to the option of going to the streets to express their grievances.