The EDSA Revolt on hindsight ... 23-years later

One of the goals of our Talkshow in Straight from the Sky is to educate our viewers on what’s going on within Cebu and today’s presentation does exactly that as we discuss a very relevant topic…and it’s on how to handle your pets or animals within your household or within your neighborhood. We all know that animals, especially stray dogs, pose a health hazard to the neighborhood, especially those that no one owns. Thus the animal goes around dumpsites foraging for whatever food it can find. These animals usually contract rabies and when they bite people, it’s going to cost the latter a lot in medical bills.

This is exactly what our special guest, Dr. Alice Utlang, Cebu City veterinarian is tasked to do, collect those stray animals and make sure that they do not become a menace to society. Unfortunately, when the City Pound goes around looking for strays, they, more often than not, end up picking up someone’s favorite pet. But let me point out, that we can’t blame the dog on this one. The responsibility falls on the dog owners, who apparently didn’t put a leash on the dog and, more importantly, did not register the animal.

Actually this is the job of the barangay officials to ensure that they have a complete record not only of the people living within their barangay, but also of the number of animals within their boundaries. Our guest also tells us how the city euthanizes the animals they’ve caught through gassing. This was widely misunderstood, but very well explained by Dr. Utlang. So please watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00PM tonight.

* * *

At the nth hour, Malacañang finally declared today as a “school holiday” as it is the 23rd Anniversary of the EDSA Revolt a.k.a. People’s Power Revolt. I’m glad that once more Malacañang has recognized EDSA as a defining moment in Philippine history, because it really was. We’ve had 14 years of one-man rule, or the so-called conjugal Marcos Dictatorship, not to mention the two official or legal terms of Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos before he transformed to be a dictator, but where did the Marcoses lead this country? To second to the last amongst our ASEAN neighbors. This is concrete proof that when power corrupts, it really corrupts absolutely!

Come to think of it, corruption was the reason why the Filipinos got sick and tired of the Marcoses. For me the tipping point came on Aug. 21, 1983 when then Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was felled by an assassin’s bullet. Then Marcos rule began its steep downslide towards its historic and embarrassing demise. This was aggravated by the Agrava Commission that virtually convicted the Avsecom soldiers, but didn’t indict any higher officials.

Then finally came the snap elections on February when the opposition finally got its act together when then Sen. Salvador “Doy” Laurel dropped his presidential ambitions and accepted Ninoy’s widow Cory Aquino to run for president while he accepted to be her vice-presidential candidate. We will never forget how the Marcos machinery cheated through its teeth and when the computer technicians in PICC walked out in disgust and history was made with the EDSA Revolt. 

Today the Philippines is still mired with the same problems that we had during the Marcos dictatorship and partly we can only attribute this to the Cory Constitution that did not bring back the two-party system that Marcos threw out when he declared Martial Law. Instead, Tita Cory’s subalterns brought in a multi-party system to Filipinos who despite our being known as the first democracy in Asia are still very much politically immature. This is why we have so many political parties all in the name of the poor Filipinos, yet it is the politicians getting rich at the expense of the poor!

With corruption so widespread, we should expect the Filipino people to march once more to EDSA to rid our country with our corrupt leaders. But alas … times have changed. If you were 50 years old at the time of the EDSA Revolt, you’d be 73 years old today! Meanwhile those who were born at the time of EDSA are now 23 years old and have no recollection of the events that transpired at that time.

Worse of all, we replaced our corrupt leaders with EDSA One and EDSA Two and yet the corruption became worse! So what do we do? As our good friend Sir Bobby Aboitiz told us during breakfast last Friday morning with Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga…“We need another tipping point!” If you ask me, the Spirit of EDSA still lives on through the Gawad Kalinga (GK) where new communities are being transformed through the vision of Tony Meloto. This brings us to what Ninoy once said that “The Filipino is worth dying for!” But Sir Bobby Aboitiz changed that to “The Filipino is worth living for!” I fully agree with him, because a dead hero can no longer help in rebuilding our sick nation. What we need are living heroes!