3 EDSAs are enough

There are current events taking place thousands of miles away from the Philippines. Yet what’s happening there are eerily close to what’s going on here in our own land. Like our nation, this tiny archipelagic country situated in the Indian Ocean is currently under political turmoil that threatens their fledgling democratic state.

The Republic of Maldives is renowned as a paradise holiday destination for honeymooners and celebrities around the world. The turquoise waters that surround Maldives are enough come on for tourists willing and able to pay up to $1,000 a night at high-end, luxury hideaway resorts.

Maldives is suddenly thrust into a hot spot for troubles following the ouster of its head of government from office. The cause of the ouster: The Maldivian Chief Executive got into a big quarrel with the police and army of his country over the sending of a judge to military detention.

News reaching us here quoted ousted Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed saying he was forced to resign “at gunpoint” by police and army officers involved in the coup plot against him. Nasheed peacefully stepped down on Tuesday amid the ensuing unrest.

Nasheed is the first democratically elected president of his country in 2008 that was ruled for about 30 years by former Maldivian leader, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Nasheed, described as a charismatic pro-democracy activist, had been repeatedly jailed by Gayoom’s regime.

The resignation was a disgracing fall from power for President Nasheed. He is popular to his people as a former human rights campaigner who defeated the nation’s long-time ruler in the country’s first multi-party election. Nasheed began his term with great hopes for his people.

But over the past year, Nasheed was battered by protests in his Sunni Muslim nation. Maldivians demonstrated against soaring prices they blamed on economic reforms instituted by Nasheed as needed to bridge the budget deficit of his government. Islamic activists also protested in demand of more religiously conservative policies.

Nasheed’s woes took a turn for the worse when he ordered the arrest of Abdulla Mohamed. Reportedly a top judge in Maldives, Mohamed freed a detained critic of the Nasheed government on the grounds he had been illegally detained.

The deposed Maldivian President, on the other hand, accused the judge of political bias and corruption. Nasheed put blame on his country’s failed judicial system and called for the United Nations (UN) help to solve the crisis in Maldives.

Latest reports from Male, the capital island of Maldives, have it that Nasheed is now the one leading protest rallies. Nasheed accused his vice-president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, as having took part in his ouster. Hassan, who has taken the helm of the government of Maldives, denied the charges. Several thousand Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) supporters led by Nasheed marched through the streets of the capital last Wednesday to protest his removal from office.

It is certainly not our wish to have the same thing happen in our country. While we also have a popularly elected President Aquino, our country already has had more than its share of people power-led revolts.

In the next two weeks, our country is observing the 26th anniversary of the February, 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution when former President Corazon Aquino, the late mother of P-Noy, was swept into office at Malacañang Palace. It was called EDSA-1, for short, preceding the two other EDSAs that took place.

EDSA-2 in January 2001 installed into office former Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo following the ouster of former President Joseph Estrada. A few months later in May 2001, breaking out from EDSA vigil rally, rabid supporters of Estrada stormed the Palace grounds. It was quashed in a bloody encounter with Palace soldiers and later dubbed as EDSA-3.

After Arroyo’s term in June 2010, the yearly commemoration of EDSA-2 also ended. It passed without much fanfare last month. As Estrada succinctly put it, there was nothing in EDSA-2 worth commemorating because it was a sheer power grab. Estrada recalled the railroading of his impeachment trial at the Senate that triggered it all.

We could not afford to have this kind of situation again now that we are having another full-blown Senate impeachment trial. This time it is the chief justice of the Supreme Court (SC) undergoing an impeachment trial. Yesterday, supporters of embattled Chief Justice Renato Corona showed their strength in a mass action they mounted all the way to Padre Faura, Manila.

This is why the situation in Maldives gave me the creeps. If in Maldives it merely involved a judge, in our case it’s no less than the Chief Justice.

I could relate with Maldives after having visited their islands in July 2009 as part of the delegation of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). We joined in that trip Sen. Loren Legarda who is the designated UNISDR “champion” for Asia-Pacific disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation advocate.

At that time, Nasheed was a popular environmental celebrity, traveling the world to persuade governments to help combat the climate change that could raise sea levels and inundate his archipelago nation. He founded the Climate Vulnerable Forum to coordinate environmental policy among a group of about 30 countries, including the Philippines, as among the most affected by climate change. He declared his government is ready to even relocate the entire population of Maldives elsewhere if the global community would not do anything to help mitigate real threats of climate change.

A media-savvy leader, Nasheed even held a Cabinet meeting underwater in scuba gear to dramatize the threat of rising oceans to his low-lying nation of 300,000 people. He subsequently announced plans to make his nation ‘carbon-neutral,’ using wind and solar projects.

Nasheed’s fall should be a wake-up call for all leaders to be reminded that popularity is transient. We already have 3 EDSAs as proof.