The need to finish the unfinished EDSA revolt

This is supposed to be the Part 2 of our EDSA report that we read from the book given to me by my late mentor, Sir Max Soliven, entitled “Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, The Aquinos, and the Unfinished Revolution” by the late Sandra Burton. But due to our limited space, I will just breeze through the historic incidents and get to the “Unfinished Revolution” part.

EDSA was historic in the sense that there were two presidential inaugurations 25 years ago where by 11 a.m., Tita Cory took her oath of office as the seventh President in Club Filipino in Greenhills. An hour later, beleaguered President Ferdinand E. Marcos took his oath of office in Malacañang Palace. Earlier Marcos called US Senator Paul Laxalt and was given a personal message from US President Ronald Reagan offering him asylum in the United States. In a last-ditch effort, Marcos was seeking for some kind of compromise to keep him in power. But Laxalt advised Marcos: “I think you should cut and cut cleanly. I think the time has come.”

By late afternoon, President Marcos was in bed having a fever, while preparations were made to evacuate him and his family by helicopter. Their problem was his entourage had ballooned from 30 people to 60. Then President Marcos called Gen. Allen who asked him where he wanted to go? Marcos told him: Clark Air Base. Gen. Allen then asked him where they would go from there? Marcos replied: “To Ilocos Norte.” By 8:30 p.m. the US helicopters landed at the Malacañang Park and took the presidential entourage and flew to their destiny… not to Paoay, but to Hawaii.

When news of the departure of Marcos came out on radio, Cebuanos from nowhere suddenly trooped to the Fuente Osmeña in the hundreds of thousands to celebrate the greatest victory party we’ve ever seen. People were embracing and kissing each other and traffic was snarled to a halt with cars honking their horns celebrating the victory at EDSA. I learned later that this was also happening in many major cities throughout the country.

Call me lucky that I already booked the PAL 7 a.m. flight from Cebu to Manila on Feb. 26, 1986 and as I landed in the old airport, I took a taxi to go to my downtown hotel in Avenida. But over the taxi radio, we heard that Malacañang was no longer guarded and people were all over the place… so I asked the taxi driver to bring me there instead. It was my first time in Malacañang and I saw the bedroom of Marcos and his hospital bed… and the fabulous shoes of Imelda.

It was like a boisterous party gone madly wild inside Malacañang. Democracy was restored and it was a great feeling to be Filipino. We earned the respect of the world that we had a bloodless people power revolt that ousted a dictatorship. If this were a Walt Disney or Warner Bros cartoon or movie, we could have written: “And then they lived happily ever after!”

Sandra Burton published her book in March 1989 and somehow, she prophetically declared as part of the title of her book “The Unfinished Revolution.” Indeed, 25 years after the EDSA revolt, we put an Aquino in Malacañang to replace a strongman rule; unfortunately we swung to the opposite direction having a weak or soft President. Not because President Cory was a woman, but rather she did so many things simply to undo what Marcos did. For instance, she released the jailed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison without asking for peace, which is why today, we still have no peace in our land.

She stopped the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) which is why today Filipinos continue to suffer those unexpected power outages. But she continued what the Marcos Dictatorship tried to force upon the Filipino people with his “Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa” (One Nation, One Language) doctrine, which would have turned all Filipinos into Tagalog speakers. Thankfully, then Cebu Governor Emilio “Lito” Osmeña filed a case against President Cory’s presidential order and won the case.

Twenty-five years after EDSA, which was followed by another EDSA that toppled the corrupt presidency of Joseph “Erap” Estrada, the Philippines is still playing catch-up to its ASEAN neighbors. Now is the right time to ask those hard questions, what’s keeping this nation from moving forward? Where did we go wrong? How do we fix our country?

My devalued 10 cents’ thought on this is … our nation has become too politicized for our own good! Look at the front pages of national or local newspapers, chances are, the headlines are about something political or related to it. Those congressional hearings are done in aid of election and provide a telenovela to our people. We’ve only wasted precious time and the only path to a genuine political reform is via Charter change (Cha-cha) and a shift to a federal system so we can finish the unfinished EDSA revolt!

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