It’s been 31 years since February 22, when we were all startled by news that Juan Ponce Enrile, the defense minister, had holed up with some of his trusted lieutenants in Camp Aguinaldo, and declared a break-away from the Marcos regime.
After hours of the longest day, constabulary chief Fidel V. Ramos joined Enrile in the mutiny. Later that fateful day, a press conference was held in Malacañang, and supposed mutineers who had planned to attack the Palace and the dictator himself were presented. All hell had broken loose in the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
That evening, a good friend and kompadre, Sostenes Campillo Jr. (may his soul rest in eternal peace) called me up and asked me to prepare to leave my residence, along with my wife and two kids. One was less than two years old and the other a six-month-old baby. He was taking us to a safehouse for the night and until things cleared up.
I was at the time very active in the anti-Marcos campaign, having been drafted by Ninoy Aquino in Boston to help Doy Laurel organize the above-ground opposition. When the Edsa mutiny broke out, I was deputy secretary-general of the Unido, the political party under which Cory and Doy ran in the snap elections of Feb. 8, 1986. I was Laurel’s de facto spokesman and chief factotum.
I knew something was up in the air, after several meetings between Philip Habib of the US State Department and the major players in the country’s politics at the time. Even when I saw Laurel off the previous day, where he was on the way to a “boycott rally” launched against Marcos cronies in Cebu, he whispered, “Take care of Cecille [my wife] and the kids. May mangyayari,” cryptic words that presaged the event that was soon to unfold.
But this article is not about a personal testament on the Edsa revolt, also called the People Power Revolution.
Thirty-one years had passed since the whole nation was reinvigorated with the exhilarating pride of the peaceful toppling of an entrenched dictatorship.
The question we must reflect upon in our minds and hearts is, what happened in the last 31 years? How come life hasn’t changed much for the majority who remain shackled to poverty? Why is the Filipino diaspora to almost every corner of the world about the only escape from such poverty? Whatever happened to the promise that the restoration of our freedoms under a reign of democratic space and form would be the key to making life better for our people?
How could life have been better if Cory Aquino, with the awesome powers under a self-proclaimed revolutionary government, had undertaken revolutionary reforms?
Would our lives become better, and our future more secured, if she had not listened to the power-hungry brokers who advised her to marginalize her duly-elected vice president, Doy Laurel, who unselfishly gave way to her to pave the way for opposition unity in the snap elections called by Marcos?
Would it have been better if she had not resurrected the traditional politicians and oligarchs whose fortunes Marcos had decimated, and who, back in power, returned the economy and the polity into “happy days are here again” for themselves and to the exclusion of the people they always claim to serve?
Likewise, should she have ordered her PCGG to leave no stone unturned in the quest for illicit wealth, instead of tarrying with legal processes that turned up only a measly portion of the purloined wealth and left many unscathed?
How would Cory’s reign have been if she had not been threatened by several coup attempts which destabilized the country? Would the economy, given the goodwill engendered by Edsa worldwide, have finally taken off, like Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia even?
Was it right for us to simply condemn everything that the Marcos authoritarianism had effected in its close to 14 years, and in the process, throw the baby along with the bath water?
When she gave birth to a new Constitution through 50 appointed commissioners, did the fundamental law that was forged, and later approved by the people in a plebiscite held during the giddy apex of her personal popularity, reflect the needs of a most unequal society? Was it something that could stand the test of time, or was it so rigid that it could not adapt to changes in the international economic order and the rapid advance of technology?
Did that Constitution, now 30 years old, effect meaningful change, or did it merely restore the institutional forms of a democracy without social and economic substance?
As for the people, yes, all of us, did we choose the right local and national leaders when elections were restored? Or did we simply allow the old trapos to come back with a vengeance? And feather their nests through family dynasties that took advantage of term limits and local autonomy?
To be sure, political dynasties are not an inherent evil; it is the abuse of such and the denigration of meritocracy, engendered by the non-existence of true political parties that has made such a mess of our system.
Was there any attempt by our new leaders to instill discipline, nationalism, a deep sense of pride in our history and culture, that should have made a united people of us all, with common purpose and determination?
How quickly time has passed. An entire generation has been born, the millennials who neither lived through the excesses of authoritarianism, nor the benefits of discipline and political will. The same generation, born in the 80’s, with hardly a memory of Marcos, were in children during the Cory years, connected to the rest of the world through the marvels of information technology, now ask us, their parents —why is the Philippines so left behind by other countries? Why does life in these beautiful islands seem so bereft of hope and a sustainable future?
This article posits no clear answers. The questions we have raised are meant only to provoke reflections upon the Edsa event that altered our history 31 years ago. The fault lies in each of us, collectively.
My congratulations to the newly-formed Edsa Commission headed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea for coming up with a quiet commemoration of the event. None of the shop-worn gimmicks that have characterized past commemorations, most of them rehashed to the point of irrelevance.
Indeed, what we ought to do is to reflect: What happened? What did we do right? What did we do wrong?
And learn, hopefully under the present leadership, lessons from the past, lessons of failed policies and practices, of opportunities lain to waste.