My EDSA story

The four-day People Power began in the afternoon of Feb. 22, 1986. I was there, with both rival camps, in Cebu and in Manila, the first day, a Saturday.

I covered the Cebu anti-crony boycott rally of defeated presidential candidate Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

After her rally, I took a taxi to buy a guitar. The driver told me good and cheap guitars were sold near the Cebu airport. On the way to the terminal, I heard on radio that Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces vice chief of staff Gen. Fidel V. Famos had staged a rebellion against strongman Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.

Cory also heard about Enrile’s “withdrawal” from Marcos. The Carmelite nuns quickly sheltered Cory into their monastery in Cebu. They prayed and prayed and prayed. At 9 p.m., Cory placed a call to Johnny: “Is there anything we can do for you?” “Nothing,” the defense chief snapped back, politely, “just pray for us.”

At the PAL counter, I told the manager to get me a seat on the earliest flight back to Manila, the 9 p.m. flight. With me was Boy del Mundo of United Press International (UPI). We landed in Manila at about 10 p.m.

At Camp Aguinaldo, we were surprised that its commander welcomed us with open arms. At the Department of National Defense (DND) headquarters, we joined the press conference of Enrile and Ramos. Enrile claimed he cheated for Marcos, by 300,000 votes in Region II, to win the Feb. 6, 1986 snap election.

Marcos did not cheat. Two Namfrel volunteers were hanged on a tree in Ilocos. This delayed the transmittal of 90 percent pro-Marcos votes to the canvassing center at PICC which was counting nearby pro-Cory Metro Manila votes. When the Ilocandia votes surged in Manila, they erased Cory’s early lead, enabling Marcos to win the election, by a 1.5-million vote margin.

We spent the first night inside the DND building. I sensed Enrile and Ramos did not have enough men inside the camp to repel the counter-coup troops of AFP chief of staff Gen. Fabian Ver. We, foreign correspondents, 40-plus, were the shock troops. It was not until midnight of Feb. 22 that Enrile’s Cagayan 100 of Col. Tirso Gador arrived by buses to reinforce RAM.

Four or five times the first night, Gringo woke us up, shouting “They’re going to bomb us! They’re going to bomb us!” “Hide, hide,” he suggested. I grabbed a long wooden bench and tried to sleep, on the ground floor of DND. It is better to die asleep than being killed wide awake, I told myself. I figured out a bomb dropped on the DND building would finish all of us, in one blow, whether one is on the ground floor or on the upper flood. I had a good but brief rest.

Later, I learned that Enrile and Marcos had a talk late afternoon of Feb. 22. They agreed on no shooting the first night. “At no point did I plan to attack them,” Marcos told me when I visited the exiled president in Hawaii seven months later. “I wanted no violence,” he recalled of the four-day rebellion.

Midnight that Saturday I woke up. The crowds, the first sign of People Power, had wilted, gone home to rest. Earlier, there was commotion around the camp perimeter. People clambered up the walls throwing all kinds of things into the camp grounds – Jollibee sandwiches, eggs, pandesal, canned goods, money, rice.

The second day, Sunday, Feb. 23, at 9 p.m. at the PC-INP headquarters building, Enrile advised me: “Tony, you better go home. They are going to bomb us. There is a bunker, a bomb-proof room with metal roof, but it is good for only 50 people. We cannot accommodate you.”

I was trying to mentally settle my dilemma when suddenly General Ramos walked in, chomping an unlit cigar, in t-shirt, short pants and jogging shoes. “Who wants to join me outside?” asked the general, a picture of annoying nonchalance. Nobody wanted to volunteer. Who wants to go out in the open grounds when a helicopter attack was imminent?

I meekly raised my hand. Smiling, General Ramos, his security escorts and I ambled out of the building. We went around the camp perimeter gates where battle-ready soldiers had set up bunkers and positioned tanks to repel the enemy. The men were agitated and sullen despite Eddie’s attempt to calm their nervousness.

Just before we went out of the Camp Crame headquarters building, an aide gave a slip of paper to Ramos. The paper contained three phone numbers, to the Radio Bandido manned by June Keithley, housed in a building barely a kilometer from Malacañang.

Monday, Feb. 24 morning at 7 a.m., Keithley announced on radio that the Marcoses had left. It was a lie. And premature. A psy-war by Ramos. The Marcoses had not left, yet.

The announcement triggered a rush of crowds to EDSA – E. delos Santos Avenue. The throng, over a million, was there – not to rebel against the Marcoses (they had left, di ba, per Keithley), but to celebrate. They were thankful it was all over – peacefully.

It was only in the evening of Feb. 25, 1986 after his morning oath-taking in Malacañang as the reelected president, that Marcos and his family were snatched by US helicopters from the palace. Cory had her own oath-taking at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan.

Initially, the suggestion was to hold Cory’s oath-taking inside Camp Aguinaldo. But her advisers ruled it out because of security issues (fear of snipers) and the bad optics of a president being sworn in inside a military camp.

Cory went on to reign for six years and four months. It was a tumultuous presidency.

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