The EDSA People Power revolution wasn’t just on Metro Manila’s main highway. That is a fact.
People Power wasn’t just about the slain former senator Ninoy Aquino. That, too, is a fact.
Aquino’s heroism is a fact.
The exiled politician came back to fight the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, knowing he faced grave threats.
His assassination on August 21, 1983 — in full view of the world — galvanized Filipinos.
The Marcos crony press barely uttered a squeak. But the mosquito press and word of mouth brought out two million folks at Ninoy’s funeral.
In the aftermath, rallies drew bigger crowds. Marches became multi-day events, spanning more than hundreds of kilometers. The boycott of crony firms, many fronts for the dictator’s family, worsened an economic crunch caused by grand theft and the offering of national resources for the dictator’s foreign sponsors.
Marcos felt the ground move. He called for a snap election, believing fraud and coercion could still save the day.
It wasn’t to be. Within days, Filipinos faced down tanks on EDSA. The dictator fled. Ninoy’s widow, Cory Aquino, became the country’s first woman president.
Diminishment of ideals
In the decades after the 1986 People Power revolt, the fervor to relive the culmination of a people’s grand struggle dimmed.
We had a new Constitution. Yet oligarchs and political dynasties held sway. These included Marcos allies needed for their tight feudal grip on the provinces.
People Power was about accountability. But we welcomed back the dictator’s body and his heirs, all complicit in the rape of our nation.
We ousted a dictator to birth an equitable democracy. We were left with just the trappings of this. Development and governance remained of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
And so the social ills that marked the Marcos years — the same reasons he exploited to declare Martial Law — never went away.
Farmers still fought for land to own, and died for that dream. The urban poor found themselves pushed to the margins, struggling with double the cost of transportation to get to work even as wages stagnated and the prices of basic commodities zoomed. Indigenous peoples that valiantly defended their lands and waters during the Marcos dictatorship again found their communities besieged.
Post-1986, scandals plagued the nation as the elite wrestled for the seat of power.
We would oust another president for plunder, and install another with the same penchant and even more blood thirst than her predecessor.
Ninoy and Cory’s son vowed to complete his parents’ work. He went after plunderers, but refused to dismantle the system that allowed them to thrive. He even trampled on a major victory by the people — a unanimous Supreme Court ruling banning the pork barrel — by installing his own creative pork network, one that his successors gleefully exploited.
Rodrigo Duterte succeeded Noynoy. Angry Filipinos with legitimate grievances swept him to power. As with Marcos in the early years of Martial Law, they cheered as he killed, sacrificing their rights to keep imaginary bogeymen at bay.
Duterte deliberately targeted People Power. He reframed a nation’s pride into a nation’s shame, attributing this to the return of the oligarchy. Yet he was in bed with oligarchs, at least those whose bellies swelled with the proceeds of pork in return for playing blind as narcotics, gambling, and cyber scam cartels captured huge swathes of the country as tens of thousands died in the name of a fake war on drugs.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. succeeded Duterte after decades of carefully building a disinformation network that hammered at People Power and glossed over the brutalities and rapine of the first Marcos regime.
Marcos Jr. took Duterte’s daughter, Sara, as his running mate. These tyrants’ brats bannered the “continuity” of their patriarchs’ golden age. A legislature bloated with political dynasties gifted them with billions of pesos in confidential and intelligence funds. Attempts to cloak themselves in benevolence did not stop the killings, the trumped-up cases against dissenters, the tortures, the disappearances.
Greed and dreams to perpetuate power for their clans tore their unity to shreds.
The Senate and the House of Representatives have since ripped the hinges off the Dutertes’ vault of blood-soaked secrets. Congress has impeached Sara not only for graft and corruption and unexplained wealth, but also for her alleged role in extrajudicial killings.
Not either-or
The dramatic unraveling of the unholy unity came as the 39th anniversary of People Power loomed, with Marcos continuing his efforts to erase or downplay that historical watershed.
Perhaps, the last eight years have finally made Filipinos aware of what we have lost or allowed others to take away.
Perhaps, for once, we are no longer in thrall of human symbols, and beyond the myth of our country’s fate tied to individuals or clans.
Perhaps, hard-earned lessons allowed the many groups involved in today’s commemoration to reject the strident calls to embrace a dictator’s son — who has never shown remorse nor displayed any empathy with the margins — just to bury the Dutertes.
Perhaps, we are learning to believe in our power as citizens to determine the nation’s fates. This, despite knowing that the May midterm elections will end with political dynasties stronger than ever.
Today’s call is clear: To push that Rodrigo and Sara Duterte finally pay for their crimes, but also for Marcos Jr. to be held accountable for a budget geared to the interests of allies and patrons, the rising cases of human rights violations, and a reprise of his father’s strategy of pawning country and people to hold on to power.
Everyday struggle
That disparate groups finally came together is a victory in itself.
But we’ve had enough experience of grand moments dwindling into whimpers and disappearing into a void.
There are two lessons of People Power we need to retain.
The first: that powerful clans will always rush to take over gains if we let go of vigilance.
The second, that Ninoy himself understood that he wasn’t the end-all, be-all, of the struggle.
Before those three days of February 1986, thousands of Filipinos had died and endured great suffering.
For citizens to reclaim the courage they showed on EDSA, so many paved the way in the countryside and the cities defending human rights, working for social justice, even in the darkest of nights when many huddled and looked away and shut their ears.
None of our heroes, hailed or not, begrudged people who yet had to break their chains. Instead, they worked patiently, their actions showing how they cared.
Yes, the Duterte and Marcos camps demonized yellow. But we cannot ignore the fact that the reason “dilawan” took hold wasn’t just due to misinformation and disinformation; it was also because, somewhere along the way, many forgot what People Power meant.
It wasn’t just justice for Aquino. It was also about justice for all. It should never have ended just because we ousted a dictator.
People Power was a stand against repression. The cycle of injustice will never stop until we learn to hold everyone accountable, even those who earned our votes.
Our Constitution’s Bill of Rights is a map to what makes up a dignified, meaningful life. That is a cause that goes beyond elections or even the rare times we kick out rulers. That is a struggle we should embrace daily.
We ought to stop jeering at voters. Not until our bones and marrows absorb this lesson: Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.
Justice means speaking up for everyone’s rights even when they forget why those rights matter. – Rappler.com