Hell of an anniversary

It was supreme irony indeed that the Edsa 2’s second anniversary projected a Philippines in deep and dismal disunity. After Edsa 1 in 1986 and its successor just two years ago, this nation should have sailed into calmer seas. People Power was our unique contribution to a post-World War II universe, a dazzling display of non-violence that unseated first a dictator and 15 years later a debauched disciple of la dolce vita. Both Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada were accused of large-scale plunder in the billions. The first died in lonely exile in Honolulu. The second languishes in detention with a possible conviction of death through lethal injection.

Quite a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, even Africa were spellbound by People Power. I had interviewed some of their leaders via satellite TV during the 11th anniversary of EDSA I, including Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. To a man (yes that includes the lovely Benazir), they said their struggles for independence and national unity were greatly inspired by the peaceful street upheaval we Filipinos unleashed during those "four days that shook the world." Filipinos were admired everywhere.

So impressed was President Francois Mitterand of France that he invited Corazon Aquino as his sole guest of state during the 200th anniversary of the French revolution in 1789 (The Seizure of the Bastille). Mr. Mitterand led the illustrious list of foreign leaders sending congratulatory messages to the Philippines broadcast in 1997 by the TV anniversary special I hosted titled The World Remembers.

As revolutions go, the successful French uprising was presumably the defining moment of all modern historic revolutions, spreading liberté, egalité, fraternité to the whole world.

How is the success of a revolution measured? The French savant Raymond Aron replied that a revolution was successful if the gains it achieved greatly exceeded the losses it sustained. In that sense, the French revolution was a smash success as it upended the monarchy and established the first moorings of parliamentary democracy. So were the American Civil War, Japan’s Meiji Restoration, China’s Maoist revolution, Oliver Cromwell’s uprising against entrenched royalty in Britain, Germany’s and Otto von Bismarck’s bloody breakup of dynastic rule, and so on.

Back to the Philippines.

There is no way we can boast the Philippines has fulfilled the dreams of Edsa I and Edsa II. We all saw how sundered, how factionalized, how torn apart our country was last Monday.

We were supposed to celebrate People Power II. We dishonored it. And it was awful. Along Edsa, leading to the Edsa Shrine, a horde of uniformed thugs calling themselves the Philippine National Police fell upon 2000 demonstrators whose only desire was to commemorate the event peacefully and democratically. Sure, many of them belonged to the Left. Sure, a great lot were highly critical of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Verily, many wanted her removed from office.

But so what? Democracy is not democracy if people cannot rally, if they cannot gather in public to raise their fists however angrily and venomously against the powers-that-be. In the United States, citizens are rising daily by the tens of thousands, eventually by the hundreds of thousands to kick George W. Bush verbally in the face because they are against the US urging war in Iraq. Here, no permit no rally? That’s horse manure. No permits were necessary for American citizens to gully out into the streets and bang their president with verbal brickbats.

Almost all over the world, anti-Iraq war public demonstrations are exploding without any b.s. of a permit as demanded by our government. Dammitohell. Daily we hear the chant of "national unity" silkily escape the lips of our president, the nation’s leaders, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. And yet daily, all they do to promote national unity is a deluge of rhetoric, wanton as wanton can be, all sound and fury signifying nothing at all. Have they really done anything to alleviate poverty, lessen graft and corruption, diminish crime and violence? C’mon. Their score card is zero.

Those demonstrators, pounced upon by the police like newly escaped convicts from Muntinlupa, had all the right to gather at the Edsa Shrine and there commemorate the event they participated in with exemplary courage. They had no hidden bombs, no grenades, no Molotov cocktails, no knives or bludgeons. They numbered only 2000. So what was the government afraid of? Why break them up with the coldbloodedness of Hitler’s KGB? Why hit their heads with truncheons, hose them with water cannon, disperse them as if they were vermin?

That EDSA Shrine only became sacred, hallowed ground because it became the gathering area of anti-government demonstrators and protesters in 1986 and again in 2001. Without the bellow of non-violent street revolt, without the people shredding the pretentions of two presidents berserk with power and money, without a beautiful rainbow demarcating the two events, Edsa would never have become Edsa. And the Edsa Shrine would have remained a prime piece of Church real estate, up for grabs by the highest bidder.

And what else did we see Monday?

At the Edsa Shrine chapel where Bishop Soc Villegas holds court like a viceroy contemplating his fiefdom, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo held forth with her usual blizzard of promises. Here were largely the elite, and deserters of the Edsa dream. Here and there you saw faces of once-upon-a-time Edsa marchers, of course many members of GMA’s cabinet applauding each presidential pledge perfunctorily. Mrs. President, forget about your other pledges. Forget sinking your sword into crime, graft and corruption, poverty. I don’t believe that crap anymore. But if you can fulfill one, just one, the nation will be beholden. Set up the machinery for clean, honest and orderly elections in 2004. Get computers, technology to count the votes, not human eyes and human hands, and we shall be in you thrall.

What else did we see?

We saw former senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Francisco Tatad, Lydia Montayre of PCA (People’s Consultative Assembly), and former congressmen Homobono Adaza gather into a circus of their own. They launched an impeachment complaint against GMA. They accused her of soliciting gifts from Mark Jimenez and spending P470 million for a rural electrification project not approved by Congress. Hell’s bells. I distinctly remember that old "Oh Johnny" (How you can love) and the impeachment move hit me like a blowtorch. JPE was Lord Marshal of martial rule, and as Sen. Nene Pimentel once commented, he was an expert in kissing the ass of the dictator.

What else did we see?

We saw a bevy of movie stars, the most celebrated and possibly the wealthiest, marching to the Senate to protest the 10 percent value-added tax on their talent fees. Excuse me. They don’t get my vote at all. They live in mansions or luxurious high-rise condos, travel in style to the US and other pleasure igloos abroad as often as they please, ride the flashiest cars, dress themselves to the nines. The poor in our society, according to Sen. Ralph Recto, are taxed more than they are – and so what’s the beef? In Sweden and many other Western countries, celebrities such as athletes, movie stars and business luminaries are taxed 50 to 70 percent of their earnings, and you don’t seem them storming the streets to protest.

And what else?

We continued seeing virtually the whole of the House of Congress ride their dirty and demented roller-coaster whopping their crusade for Charter change. They would have it their way. Against all logic, against the overwhelming opposition of the citizenry, they would merge both houses of Congress into a Constituent Assembly where they can rape and ravage the Constitution at will. They don’t realize, or refuse to realize, nobody would miss them at all if something like the bomb that exploded in Bali exploded in their midst and exterminated all of them. For once, Miriam Defensor Santiago was right when she bombinated that all of them should be marched forcibly to the Luneta and there executed. Two bullets for each, Milady Miriam said, "since they have very thick hides."

This is the country everybody wants to unite.

If two Edsas cannot unite our society, what can? The voices of Mrabeau, the Jacobins Robespierre, Danton, Marat, the philosophers of the French Enlightenment like Jean Jacques Rousseau could not unite a France divided against itself. The old system was disintegrating, an aristocracy that ruled by virtue of "nobility of blood". The word "citizen" (citoyen) was just emerging in the nation’s vocabulary. France was a geographical pentagon ruled by kings and princes struggling to be a nation. As the bourgeois sought to grab the ruler’s baton from the aristocrat, and as the latter fiercely resisted, including the Church, the bloody period of the guillotine was born.

The old illustrado system is dying in the Philippines. Would that the nation be spared largescale bloodshed.