This Friday marks the climax of a weeklong test of strength between the scandal-ridden and beleaguered government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and coalesced opposition groups commemorating the 22nd anniversary of EDSA People Power I over whether that 1986 popular revolt, which toppled the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, has become a spent political force.
The moment of truth arrives at the inter-faith rally in Makati City this Friday, where the multi-sectoral protest movement demanding the resignation of the President will be tested on whether it can mount a mass action approximating that of Feb. 25, 1986 and bring sufficient pressure on the President to step down or prompt the military, the police and the Cabinet and the senior bureaucracy to defect en masse, causing an implosion of the regime.
The opposition coalition?made up of strategic big business organizations (among them the Makati Business Club and the Management Association of the Philippines), the legal opposition, outspoken activists of the academic community, civil society groups and segments of the legal Left (represented by the party-list members of Congress)?expects the climactic Makati rally this Friday to draw a huge demonstration of outrage to prove that People Power has not dissipated as a catalyst for toppling corrupt, abusive and repressive regimes.
Somehow, the rally today puts to the test two contending issues, forced to the surface by the 22nd anniversary: the politics of explosion, triggered by a massive revival of People Power of the likes of EDSA I, and the politics of implosion, leading to the collapse of a regime caused by defection of the military and the Cabinet, two critical elements of institutional support for the regime. The military defections of February 1986 and of January 2001, plus the Cabinet resignations, triggered the disintegration of the Marcos regime and that of President Joseph Estrada in 2001.
Today, none of these two scenarios for regime change has emerged dominant. This is why I argue that today marks our reality check on the residual power of EDSA People Power II as a catalyst of political change, either through explosion or implosion.
The stalemate between these two scenarios underscores the reality that the dynamics of modes of regime change have radically altered over the past two decades. Since 1986, we have had three leadership changes defined by democratic elections: in 1992 when Fidel Ramos was elected; in 1998 when Joseph Estrada was elected; and in 2004, with the election of President Arroyo. But this pattern of electoral restoration was broken by EDSA II in 2001, and from 2004, the elected Arroyo government has been threatened with extinction by a number of coup attempts and three impeachment complaints in Congress. Despite the reassertion of the electoral tradition, the EDSA People Power tradition has not been buried and is now resurrecting with renewed vitality, reinvigorated by political scandals involving alleged election rigging in 2004 and a series of corruption cases.
The reassertion of the EDSA tradition was manifested by the call of former president Corazon Aquino, icon of the EDSA I movement, for Ms Arroyo?s resignation, although she did not go so far as to advocate another mass movement to topple the regime. She is the leading figure in this Friday?s multi-faith rally in Makati, testing whether her charisma derived from EDSA I is still alive and she still has the moral authority to call the scattered EDSA troops to the streets in huge numbers.
Even Aquino has shed the illusion that 22 years later, EDSA I can still be harnessed for mass action. Speaking to a joint meeting of the Makati Business Club, Management Association of the Philippines and PinoyME Foundation last Feb. 26, Aquino did not make a pitch for another People Power uprising, to the disappointment of many people. She merely called on President Arroyo to step down, saying it was the least disruptive way out of the ?severe moral crisis? facing the country. She said, ?She must give way to a credible government that could lead by example. Given our concern to protect the moral pillars of democracy, the extra-constitutional removal of the President is not an ideal we would want to aspire for.?
Aquino?s call for restraint was echoed by the Catholic Bishops? Conference of the Philippines, which in a pastoral statement on Feb. 26, called on the President to allow her officials to tell the truth about the slew of allegations of corruption related to several government transactions, but fell short of demanding her resignation. Instead, the bishops urged the President to be ?part of the effort? to seek the truth.
The coyness of Aquino and the disappointing position of the bishops restraining people power highlighted the departure from the dynamics of 1986, when Aquino rode the crest of a forceful people power movement driven by the activist archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and the mass civilian participation in street protests in support of the military mutiny led by Marcos? Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Constabulary chief, Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos.
Today?s configuration has lost the fervor for mass action of 1986. It tells us that today?s movement is not based on mass action to bring pressure on the key support institutions of government to defect, such as the military and the bureaucracy. Today?s movement has changed emphasis. It has shifted its cutting edge from confrontation in the streets to bringing moral pressure on government. The shift is not exerting a powerful pressure on government officials to step down. It emboldens them to stonewall.
