Twenty-seven years after the Edsa People Power Revolution toppled the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, the government of the restored Philippine democracy is in the hands of the son of the late President Cory Aquino, whose family is descended from the country’s wealthiest political dynasty.
On Feb. 25, we celebrated a very important date in our recent history –the People Power Revolution of 1986. Yet, it was celebrated in only a small section of Edsa as if that portion were the only beneficiary of the restoration of democracy in the country.
Filipinos should stop blaming his father for this country’s abject pass, Bongbong Marcos said on the eve of Edsa last week. “China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia can all point to the progress they have made these last 26 years but unfortunately, for the majority of our people, nothing much has changed today. Blaming past administrations will not bring food to the plates of the hungry. Excuses cannot substitute for performance and results.”
Twenty-six years after Edsa I, also called the 1986 People Power Revolution, exactly what has changed? People old enough to remember ask the question with a feeling of frustration, while those who are too young find it hard to relate to an event too remote in time. But for the bustle that the administration tried to whip up in the run-up to today’s remembering, one can readily see that the national mood is disinterest.
Filipinos mark today the 26th anniversary of toppling a dictator without bloodshed. That flower-in-the-gun-barrel model is refracted in Gandhi’s march to protest the Salt Tax in 1930, Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” of 1988 and Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolt” last year.
Here at the Eggie Apostol Foundation, our memory of Feb. 25, 1986, remains as clear as ever. That’s because after the Philippine electorate trooped to the polls in May 1995 to choose their senators and congressmen, Tita Eggie asked herself and her friends: “Where have all the yellow flowers gone?” Merely 10 years after Edsa I, in just our third iteration of this democratic exercise, allegations of vote-buying and “dagdag-bawas” flew thick and fast among the contending political parties.
