Mistake

I nearly fell off my seat last Wednesday listening to Cory Aquino declare Edsa Dos a mistake and apologizing to the president deposed as a consequence of a people’s just indignation against a regime of corruption.

That deposed president, smiling broadly while listening to the apology, was actually convicted for plunder. In an unfortunate act that could only indicate tolerance for wrongdoing, that deposed president was promptly pardoned shortly after conviction.

Perhaps history was being revised there and then to conform to the factional alignments of the moment.

Perhaps we were all being asked to forget why we were in the streets that Yuletide season of 2000 and why so much outrage brought so many to Edsa on January 2001. We were in the streets then because it had become abundantly clear that a band of thugs had overrun our government. They consumed liquor for its cost and not so much for its taste as they gambled like money was going out of style. They apportioned among themselves all the areas where power could yield profit.

We were in the streets then because the political leadership had become an embarrassment. The presidential palace had been so desecrated it functioned as a stinking karaoke joint by nightfall. And yes, we were in the streets then because critics of the powers-that-be were kidnapped and killed, their remains burned and their bones ground to conceal the dastardly deed.

We were in the streets then because corruption had become so flagrant that the future of our children was in jeopardy. We were in the streets then because, despite the obvious costs to our institutions, a government that offended our common morality had to either step down or be deposed.

And so now we are being told that was all a mistake?

Since when did it become a mistake to cry out loud against the rape of our institutions? Since when did a people, driven by moral certainty in their cause and bringing forth an upheaval as a consequence, become a case for an apology?

Sure, there is much debate over the regime that came into place as a consequence of Edsa Dos. But the popular upheaval is one thing and the consequent power arrangement another.

If there is some disappointment over the regime that came in as a consequence of Edsa Dos, it is also partly because those who cared folded their banners too early and left things to return to their usual norm. It is because the reforms we imagined while protesting in the streets ceased to be causes to be fought for after a failed presidency was successfully deposed.

Remember, too, that we were in the streets that fateful January of 2001 not because Cory told us so. We were there to revive people power.

Cory did not shape that event. She was not our leader: an aggrieved people was asserting its sovereign will by defying a government that had failed them.

True, she supported it and that was of great value to the cause. But she did not own it. Therefore she has no right to apologize for that event in a manner that fit her current prejudices.

I grabbed the sides of my seat before I could fall off it: Cory is just being her plain self. For her there are no historical meanings larger than her pet peeves. There are no large principles that cement bonds that outlast the vagaries of everyday politics, only alliances of conveniences and transient friendships.

When Cory was president, the political lines were always defined by who she likes and who she dislikes. She never went beyond the politics of personality. She did not let the logic of statesmanship overwhelm her own sympathies and antipathies.

That is her operational code. She goes by how she feels towards specific individuals. She honors debts of gratitude and feels bad if the favors she had given are not returned when she expects them to be.

That is also the operational code of the variety of elite politics that has ruled this country for generations. Cory does not only personify it; she lives it.

And so it comes so easily to her to discount the millions of ordinary citizens who, when the moment calls for it, put their lives on the line for a vision, for a moral crusade or for a cause that promises an improve future for the nation. For her, great historical events are nothing more than transactions between the leaders of elite factions.

And so it comes so easily to her that, in a moment of pleasantry, she could so easily write off the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary citizens summoned extraordinary courage to call in a presidency that had failed the nation. Edsa Dos was a milestone in the continuing journey towards ensuring the democratic accountability of governments to their citizens.

Edsa Dos, for all its faults and for all the unseemliness that came in its wake, is still an awesome Damocles’ sword hanging over the heads of abusive leaders. It is the sword of a sovereign people that may choose, in a moment of great aggravation, to call in a government and make it account for its misdeeds.

It is, excuse me, a heroic episode in our troubled political history. To apologize for it is to completely miss its democratic significance as well as its historical verity.

I played a role in Edsa Dos. I am as proud of that role as I am proud of whatever minor thing that I might have contributed to the triumph of the 1986 uprising. I will never apologize for that role, no matter the opportunistic twists and turns our everyday politics may take. I will never do a Cory.