Those who gave their lives for our freedom deserve no less from us, that we live their great courage in the small moments of our democratic lives
The legacy of the 1986 EDSA revolution is not merely freedom, but more importantly peace.
EDSA 1986 showed that revolution and change need not be violent affairs, and that the resulting freedom and peace need not be mutually exclusive – given the right conditions.
However, we can all agree the EDSA revolution, like the 1897 revolution against Spain, is an unfinished revolution.
In 1986 we were given another chance at democracy.
The miracle of EDSA is not merely that we unseated the dictator, but that we found the courage to come to the aid of others, when called by Jaime Cardinal Sin, in our nation’s hour of need – even if we didn’t know for certain the tanks would crush us, or that the soldiers would shoot.
By the grace of God and the compassion of those soldiers, we survived and overcame, without need of a bloodbath.
Indeed, EDSA was not just a revolution against a corrupt and dictatorial government; it was also a rejection of apathy and indifference by the governed.
But today, again, many Filipinos are unwilling to contribute a portion of their lives to the public arena, for the common good.
Whether this is in response to poor governance doesn’t matter; we owe it to the country and our people to come forward and take responsibility to change our country.
EDSA is a major avenue in Metro Manila, but its spirit is closer to the streets and alleys that run near our homes.
Those who gave their lives for our freedom deserve no less from us, that we live their great courage in the small moments of our democratic lives. This is what we ought to celebrate.
This is the promise we owe to EDSA.
There are many avenues, government-provided and citizen-enabled alike, for individuals and citizen organizations to step forward and contribute to improving governance and nation-building.
A people united by the common good and by doing the right thing can finally bring their country to the just peace it sorely needs.
Above all, however, we can complete the 1986 EDSA revolution by successfully concluding the peace processes with the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front (CPP-NDF), which thankfully is back on track.
Thirty-eight years ago, as the Philippines came to the edge of a civil war, I started discerning who I wanted to be in the trenches with if that war broke out. Do I take up arms and go to the countryside in Mindanao and fight the US-Marcos dictatorship from there?
I was in first year law school then at the University of the Philippines and was active in what we then called the UP Law Liberation Forces (formed to respond to arrests and dispersals in the demonstrations that preceded the EDSA revolution).
I was also teaching philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila then and belonged to a community of young faculty members and student leaders ready to take action against an illegitimate regime.
But EDSA intervened and the civil war was fortunately averted.
Still the revolution was not finished. On the evening of Feb. 25, 1986, as my wife and I, with my mother with us, entered Malacañan Palace with thousands of our countrymen, this was very clear to me – much work still had to be done to liberate the country from poverty and injustice.
I believe that we can finally complete, in the next two years, this unfinished revolution through a final settlement with the CPP-NDF.
If the peace agreements represented just solutions to righteous demands to address poverty and injustice in our islands, then we would have successfully completed the 1986 EDSA revolution.
Cynicism would be replaced by hope and future EDSA 1986 celebrations would not include a sense of regret that the country missed an opportunity for real change.
If the country achieves peace, Filipinos can show those only at the beginning of their path to democracy that change is not a one-time thing, and true, fruitful, revolution is not a moment in time, but a lifetime commitment to the best of our common humanity.
For this is what EDSA really means: a journey towards peace.
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