People power for 1-man rule

The first Filipino People Power revolution broke out at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 22, 1986, at Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with a military revolt led by Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, AFP deputy chief of staff and Philippine Constabulary chief, against the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.

The revolt ignited a mass civil uprising that ended without shedding blood 14 years of oppression, corruption and abuses of the Marcos regime.

The leadership of that people power movement fell into the hands of the opposition figure, Cory Aquino, daughter of one of the wealthiest landed families in the country, the Cojuangco clan embedded in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, a province in the heartland of agrarian unrest.

In reality, it was not the centuries-old highly inequitable distribution of wealth between rich and the poor that triggered the first Edsa Revolution.

It was the stealing of the snap presidential election of Feb. 7, 1986, that triggered the revolution. It was the catalyst of Edsa I. The installation of Cory Aquino did not put Philippine society on the road to social reform, or redistribution of wealth. She was installed by acclamation of a coalition of popular forces in Edsa on Feb. 25, at Club Filipino, four days after the military revolt that forced Marcos to flee to Honolulu, Hawaii, on the strength of the unofficial vote count by the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) showing Aquino leading Marcos.

The dictator disregarded the Namfrel result and proclaimed himself elected on the basis of the count of his rubber-stamp Commission on Elections.

Sparse crowd

One of the disturbing consequences of Cory Aquino’s  installation was that it led to the perpetuation of the Aquino family dynasty—with family dynasties still dominating the power structure in senatorial, congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral offices nationwide.

From this context, Edsa I was not a positive agent of change for democratization of Philippine politics.

There was little to celebrate on the 26th anniversary of Edsa I at the gathering of the government dignitaries and officials at the People Power Monument at the edge of Camp Aguinaldo.

More than a quarter of a century after Edsa I, a second Aquino dynasty heir, President Benigno Aquino III, is running the country and presiding over the direction and revision of the mandate of the nonsocial revolution led by his mother. To be sure, the current President, unlike his mother, was formally elected by a landslide in a free and fair election in 2010.

In his speech on the 26th Edsa anniversary on Saturday, President Aquino addressed the official celebration which failed to generate euphoric attendance in a crowd composed mainly of officials and local mayors and their retinues.

He used the occasion to launch a historical revision or interpretation of people power as an agent of social change. He used the event as a platform to attack the judiciary, which was a perversion of the original role of People Power I which was directed at toppling the dictatorship—an action that was a strike for liberty.

Rather, Mr. Aquino used the occasion to rabble-rouse the people to rise up in street protests against the constitutionally independent judiciary.

He urged Filipinos to take action against the judiciary that, he said, like the declaration of martial law by Marcos in 1972, was one of the wrongs committed in the past that needed to be corrected. This is an erroneous analogy.

The President continued to attack Chief Justice Renato Corona, who is on trial at the Senate impeachment tribunal.

He urged “immediate action,” saying that martial law happened because people chose to keep silent until they could no longer bear the abuses of the regime.

Inciting mob rule

“I trust that we can reach a society that is free from a judiciary with two faces—one with a partial justice system, and another with balanced scales,” Mr. Aquino said.

“If you want to remain in the old system, go ahead and pretend to be deaf. Pretend to be blind. Don’t speak. Don’t participate. But if you believe that there’s something wrong in the system and that this had to  be corrected, let’s go and push back. Let’s participate, let’s make it right.”

Although the President did not spell out the forms of action he sought, it was clear that he was inciting mob rule and violent action for crowds to storm the Supreme Court and possibly drag out Corona and justices appointed by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to pressure them to resign before the Senate tribunal could render a decision on the impeachment case.

No Filipino leader has attacked the Supreme Court and the judiciary with more vehemence and fanatical zeal than Mr. Aquino, who justifies his action with the goal to flush out corruption in government.

“Our country is now at a crossroads. In one direction is the weedy path, where the influential holds the scales of justice and those who manipulate the law benefit,” he said. “In the other is the straight path where the rules are clear, justice favors no one and those who are at fault made answerable … Let us now move so that we can quickly leave behind the darkness in the past.”

Departure from Edsa

These frenzied attacks have sharply underlined the issue that the President has gone out of bounds in fomenting mob rule, violence and undermining a fair trial under the rule of law.

The President-instigated thuggery is a clear departure from the character of People Power I.

Edsa I was a voluntary and instantaneous explosion of the people’s wrath against the dictatorship. No one trucked or instigated the people to rush to the streets to attack Malacañang. Edsa I was a defensive move.

People took to the streets in response of the call of Jaime Cardinal Sin to protect the forces of Enrile and Ramos from imminent attack and annihilation by Marcos armored loyalist forces under Gen. Fabian Ver.

In his zeal to destroy Corona and the independence of the Supreme Court, Mr. Aquino is completely misreading the meaning of people power as a weapon of last resort to protect the liberties of the people from the tyranny of their ruler.

Edsa I was an extraordinary exercise of the sovereign will of the people to restore democracy.

Mr. Aquino’s election did not give him a mandate to destroy the constitutional principle of checks and balance by coequal branches on government.

He is using people power to establish one-man rule in this country.