EDSA

It would seem un-Filipino not to say anything about EDSA as we commemorate the historic and bloodless People Power uprising against Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his 20-year dictatorship.

But, and I say this with due respect to the men and women who trooped to EDSA that week of 1986 to fight for our freedom, I can’t help but wonder – what is there to say about it, 40 years later, except to succumb to the trappings of nostalgia?

Because where are we now, really, but seemingly lost in an endless, dizzying and nausea-inducing cycle of corruption, elite-driven politics in the hands of dynasties and an economy perennially struggling to grow?

What is there to commemorate when we shamelessly put back in power the very same family that People Power fought hard, with life and limb, to remove?

Or when the strongest candidate we are seeing so far for the 2028 presidential elections is another Duterte, daughter of the architect of the bloody drug war that killed thousands of men, women and children – both alleged drug peddlers and innocents alike?

Or when the so-called opposition has not only been weakened by the bad guys but some of them have become the bad guys themselves?

Or when our politics is defined mostly by alliances and far less by public service?

In short, those who led us after EDSA failed us in ways both big and small, leaving behind broken promises, dimmed dreams and deepening disillusionment.

And so here we are under Marcos 2.0 and, in a few years, very possibly again under Duterte 2.0.

The Tiger Moon Revolution

Back in 1986, who would have thought it would end up like this 40 years later?

Just before writing this column, I saw journalist John Nery’s post on Facebook about a documentary on EDSA. It is always moving and touching to see and hear from those who were actually there, holding the line. Ed Lingao, JP Fenix, the nuns and many others talked about what happened in those four days.

I also always like to go back to Nick Joaquin’s engaging account of the 1986 People Power Revolution titled The Quarter of the Tiger Moon:

“Nobody could have prepared then president Ferdinand Marcos “for the wretched little show that awaited him on Tuesday, Feb. 25,” so goes the story. It was a date chosen, the story continues, because the numerals added up to seven, Marcos’ supposed lucky number.

“But not, it would turn out, in this Year of the Tiger.”

That day was the inauguration of Marcos as the supposed winner in the Feb. 7 presidential polls and it happened at high noon, an hour supposedly for state funerals.

But while Marcos took his oath, he never became president again.

“As the erstwhile strongman raised his right hand in solemn oath, the television coverage was abruptly cut off,” Joaquin, who had used the pen name Quijano de Manila, wrote in his book.

But euphoric and glorious as it was, we know it all went downhill from there.

Corazon Aquino’s administration was mired by destabilization plots and bad politics, including infighting among its men and women.

There was also of course her failure to resolve the land issue involving her family’s Hacienda Luisita, a 6,000-plus-hectare sugar plantation in Tarlac. While her administration enacted the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in 1988, the estate utilized a legal loophole to distribute shares to farmers instead of land. In the end, the family continued to have control of the hacienda. Even up to this day.

The 1987 Constitution

Her term also left us a new Constitution, the 1987 Constitution which abolished the two-party system. The new system, however, enabled corrupt officials to reinvent themselves and return to power.

Just take a look at the Senate now. Sure there are senators but there are also plunderers, ex-convicts and influence-peddlers. Statesmen and ladies and gentlemen of the old school who once occupied the esteemed chamber must be rolling in their graves.

Thus, in the years that followed, it was still more of the same. Many remained poor and marginalized, especially the farmers and the fisherfolk.

Big businesses thrived and expanded but some at the expense of underpaid workers and employees.

Business itself was not the problem. As I said before, it is the collusion between greedy and dishonest business people and corrupt government officials that is wrong. It’s the reason we have laws formulated to favor businesses and give them monopolies of certain sectors.

But no single leader or political party is to blame. What we face may be a systemic and cultural malaise lodged deep in the recesses of our identity as a people, as Filipinos, that keeps us exactly where we are: neither here nor there. Different, yet the same.

It is that common Filipino trait – we are quick to fight, yet easily distracted or swayed. Or worse, prone to becoming the very ogres we once set out to defeat.

It’s also because most of us are busy trying to survive the daily grind to care anymore about fighting the good fight.

So perhaps the power of EDSA lies in reminding us that we are only as good as the leaders we choose. They are a reflection of our love for our country – or more accurately, the lack of it.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.