Revolution

How can one forget those heady, sleepless four days 28 years ago?

The dictatorship was dissembling quickly. The people sensed that. No one really knew where the rapid sequence of events would take us, but we knew we had to be in the streets.

That portion of the avenue running between two important camps was the dictatorship’s gaping wound. It was the fissure in the monolith. The people rushed in to widen the fissure, infect the wound.

A wounded tyranny was not to heal itself. This was the moment to slay the wounded dragon. If it survived this moment, it would attack with great ferocity and inflict a larger toll on an emaciated nation.

When we rushed to the barricades, it was, to a large extent, an act of self-defense. Democratic restoration was an inspiring, albeit abstract, thought. What was certain for those of us in the frontline of the struggle against dictatorship was the thought that if the tyrant survived this moment, most of us would end up incarcerated or dead.

Along that historic stretch of Edsa, everything was on the table. This could not possibly end in stalemate. One side had to triumph; the other vanquished. The resolution will have to be decisive.

This was going to be a battle decided by tenacity, strength of conviction and plain courage. If we were prepared to die and the other side was unprepared to kill, the battle is ours.

At the corner of Edsa and Ortigas, we began commandeering buses, positioning them in a manner capable of stopping tanks. We flattened their tires and prepared to set them ablaze if the tanks attempted to plow through. We were revolutionaries of the old school, soon to be rendered irrelevant.

When the tanks did come, a prayerful flock simply walked past our fortified barricades, straight to the tank crews, offering prayers, flowers and food. They, not us, became the front line. They, not us, defined the course this rebellion would take.

As the units of the AFP defected one by one, the tyrant was left with no option but to flee. The more organized sections of the anti-dictatorship forces quickly swore in candidate Corazon Aquino and claimed the mantle of the uprising. A new government was installed although its legitimacy was contested by three major forces: the pro-Marcos groups who stood by the fallen dictator, the soldiers who mounted the rebellion and the mass movements who claimed to embody the genuine alternative future for the nation.

In the end, after years of turbulence and economic crisis, of insurgency and coup attempts, an exhausted people decided to support the Aquino government. The faulty Constitution hastily pasted together was reluctantly ratified. That government’s glaring incompetence and indecision was glossed over.

Most of us simply wanted peace and the space to rebuild our lives after all the years of turbulence and economic failure. That was probably the rub. As the mass movements withdrew from governance, the old elite reconsolidated their hold. The oligarchy resurrected with a vengeance, shaping the national economy into the poverty-generating structure that now stares us in the face.

Was that uprising a revolution? Perhaps not. A wrong turn was taken somewhere and today we discover we have run a full circle.

Anniversary

What is conveniently called the “Edsa Revolution” now seems to be an event of faded significance. The romantic orthodoxy about “people power” and all that is probably more important for the resident oligarchy than the disenfranchised people: it is important to provide a veil of legitimacy to the exclusionary social order the poor must now endure.

For years, it was principally government’s concern to continually foist the images of the “Edsa Revolution” upon the people since government was the main beneficiary of that event’s legitimizing sheen. Today, the administration seems entirely disinterested in reviving Edsa’s charm.

No one seems to know exactly how the anniversary will be commemorated. Nothing of the usual gathering at the People Power Monument appears to be planned. For days, we were told that the anniversary ceremonies will be held at Malacanang Palace, defying tradition.

Lately, we are told President Aquino disapproved any ceremonies at the Palace. Instead, he says he wants to spend the anniversary with the typhoon victims in Leyte.

What happens to the other personalities and groups who want to celebrate the anniversary? Will there be nothing organized for them? What happens to the traditional “salubungan” that highlights the convergence of the military rebellion and the mass movements that challenged dictatorship? Where will all the veterans of this uprising gather?

I served many years as a commissioner of the Edsa People Power Commission (EPPC). In those years, I recall preparing for the Edsa anniversary festivities many months ahead. We were careful to include all the players in this event: the military, the civil society groups and church people.

When public interest in attending the anniversary celebration began to wane, the EPPC twisted the arms of Metro mayors for them to deliver crowds to the People Power Monument. In order to attract young people, those most vulnerable to forgetting the significance of what happened, free concerts were organized.

Today, it appears, it is government’s interest in the celebration that is waning much faster than the public’s — ironically when Cory’s son is president.

Perhaps it is just that we eventually strip the “Edsa Revolution” of the many myths enveloping it, beginning with the one about empowering the people. Perhaps it is just that this happens under Noynoy’s watch, when the institutions that compose our democracy have been so debased.