EDITORIAL - EDSA@40

Days before the country marked the 40th anniversary of the people power revolt, the head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines warned that the country faced a new threat.

Archbishop Gilbert Garcera, CBCP president, described it as “moral fatigue,” which he said posed as much danger to the nation as historical distortion.

“When freedom is treated merely as a memory and not a duty, the spirit of EDSA slowly dies,” Garcera said in his homily on the fourth day of novena masses for the people power anniversary. “Freedom has a cost. Peace has a price. Faith demands responsibility.”

Anniversaries provide an opportunity for looking back, and then looking ahead to see where one is going. They invite comparisons between past and present. Is the nation better off today than 40 years ago, when corruption on a grand scale and human rights abuses prompted millions to take to the streets and boot out a dictator?

Are we better off today? Not too many Filipinos can say yes, and a number of them would have done so on the back of institutionalized thievery of people’s money.

The unresolved corruption scandal in budgeting, flood control and other public works projects casts a shadow over events marking the 40th anniversary of people power.

At the same time, prosecutors are presenting details of thousands of killings perpetrated in the course of an anti-crime campaign launched purportedly on orders of Rodrigo Duterte when he was mayor of Davao City and then president. But he had campaigned on a platform of killing criminals, and he won the presidency by landslide.

Duterte, who has denied the accusations against him, is detained in a prison used by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Despite the accusations of heinous offenses hurled against him, he remains popular while his daughter is seen as the front-runner in the 2028 presidential race.

On the 40th anniversary of the people power revolt, Filipinos are calling for sweeping reforms as well as accountability – in the drug war, and in the corruption scandal. These calls deserve  to be amplified today, with Filipinos dispelling fears of moral fatigue, and aware of the price of freedom.