Not many people know it but Edsa 1 was triggered by greed and won by a lie.
The crowds that massed on Edsa on Feb. 24, 1986, Monday, and Feb. 25, Tuesday, were there not to stage a revolt but to hold a picnic. June Keithley had announced on radio at 7 a.m. of Feb. 24 that the Marcoses had left. It was a lie. In their glee and feeling that finally it was all over, people trooped to Edsa to celebrate.
The greed arose from a Chinese forex trader who violated the peso-dollar trading band imposed by the then unofficial central bank, the Binondo Central Bank managed and headed by then Trade and Industry Secretary Roberto V. Ongpin.
Ongpin had the erring trader arrested and loaded into a van. Unfortunately, the forex trader died. Unfortunately again, the trader happened to be a man of then-Armed Forces chief Fabian C. Ver. Angered, the dreaded military chief had 22 of Ongpin’s security men arrested. They were marching in full battle gear and dressed in SWAT uniform at about 4 a.m. inside Fort Bonifacio when arrested on Feb. 22, 1986, a Saturday.
At 11 a.m., Feb. 22, 1986, at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ongpin went looking for his security men. He called up then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile who was with the Club 365 at the Atrium in Makati. Enrile thought the arrest of the 22 Ongpin security men, who turned out to be RAM Boys of Col. Gringo Honasan, was part of the crackdown against the plot to oust Marcos.
The putsch was being planned by Enrile and his RAM Boys. The defense chief had grown disenchanted with Marcos, who was very ill following a botched kidney transplant three years earlier. JPE had become wary of the palace cabal led by Ver and the first lady, Mrs. Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
Enrile summoned his boys to his house on Morado Street, Dasmariñas Village. There they plotted their next moves. They decided to make a last stand at the armed forces headquarters, Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
At 2 p.m., Enrile called then Vice Chief of Staff Lieut. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos. “Are you with us?” JPE asked Eddie. “I am with you all the way,” the latter assured him.
It was not until late in the evening that Saturday (Feb. 22, 1986) that Ramos actually joined the rebellion at Camp Aguinaldo. He had contacted his loyal PC-INP commanders, like Rene de Villa in Bicol, and Rodrigo Gutang in Cagayan de Oro and found to his dismay no troops could be readily airlifted to Manila to reinforce Enrile’s men, who were undermanned and under-armed.
Cory learned about the brewing rebellion at 4 p.m. the same Saturday in Cebu. She had led a destabilization and boycott rally there, which I covered.
After hearing about rumors of the Enrile defection, I went to the Mactan airport to book a flight to Manila. I landed in Manila shortly after 9 p.m. With Boy del Mundo of then UPI, I took a taxi to Camp Aguinaldo.
I was surprised to find the camp commander welcoming us with open arms. Enrile and Gringo had no troops at that time. Enrile had made a deal with Marcos—No shooting on the first night. Also, foreign correspondents were to be allowed inside Camp Aguinaldo.
In the Comelec-sanctioned official count, the legal and official winner was Marcos, by a margin of 1.7-million votes.
It was thought Marcos had cheated because his Solid North votes were transmitted very late to the tabulation center at the PICC. Two Namfrel volunteers were hanged in Ilocos. The Ilocano votes were enough to overwhelm Cory’s lead in Metro Manila and other places. The canvassers claimed Marcos was cheating and so led by the wife of a RAM major, walked out, as if on cue. The day before the celebrated incident, we, foreign correspondents, had been alerted about the planned walkout and to be there to cover it.
Cory Aquino didn’t have any participation in the four-day People Power revolt of Feb. 22 to 25, 1986 or Edsa I.
Inside the Defense Ministry headquarters, Enrile and Ramos were giving an extended press conference. I asked if Cory Aquino called them up. Enrile said yes. “What can I do for you?” she asked. “Nothing, just pray,” Enrile replied.
After Cory got the presidency, Namfrel made recount of the votes cast in the February snap election. The tally still showed Marcos was the real winner, not by two million votes, as canvassed by the Batasan, but by 800,000 votes as recounted by Namfrel.
Cory disregarded the 1973 Constitution and proclaimed a Freedom Constitution to sidetrack critics from questioning her legitimacy.
Cory had a tumultuous reign. Her cabinet was riven by discord between right and left wingers. She battled a nasty communist insurgency whose guerillas swelled to their highest number ever. She tried to placate Muslim separatists with an aborted autonomy deal, ala Tripoli Agreement of Imelda Marcos.
The century’s worst earthquake, the century’s worst volcano eruption, and among the most massive floods happened during her time. Twelve to 18-hour blackouts scared the daylights out of investors. An unruly military mounted nine coup attempts against her.
Only raw courage and the power of prayer saved her and her administration from ignominy.
When Cory Aquino left office, the economy was in the throes of a recession. Daily blackouts paralyzed business. She mothballed the Bataan nuclear plant which would have been the principal power source for the main island of Luzon, which produced half of the total economic output.
Still after Cory died on Aug. 1, 2009, the people were so grief-stricken they elected on May 10, 2010, her ghost in the person of Noynoy Aquino, a man who never held a stable job before and who probably himself was not a stable person, to run the 12th largest nation on earth in population.