Is celebrating Edsa still relevant today?

Should Filipinos ask that question this year, 33 years after “People Power” brought great pride to the country? Is it an event we should cherish as a great moment in history that brought us true democracy? Or is it an event we should view as a failed experiment, to be jettisoned like old shoes? Should we remain hopeful, or admit our society has degenerated irretrievably, thanks to the politics that constantly bedevils this nation?

What became of the euphoria after the 1986 Edsa revolt that produced four coffee-table books? There’s Nick Joaquin’s “The Quartet of the Tiger Moon,” Cynthia Baron and Melba Suazon’s “Nine Letters,” “People Power” edited by Monina Mercado, and “Bayan Ko!” edited by Robin Moyer. In July that year in the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, I wrote a review remarking that “The books may be what Filipinos need at this time to remind them of what they fought so hard for during those four heady days in February, because, as a people, Filipinos seem to have long memories but short attention spans.”

I also wrote that Filipinos were “growing increasingly restive over the fact that their new president has not wrought the instant miracles they expected from her, while disgruntled elements of Philippine society are bent on creating more problems for their beleaguered nation, and Cory Aquino looks close to being overwhelmed by all the problems (she’s just expressed a desire to finish her term and return to private life).”

“Soon after the wave of euphoria swept the country over Marcos’ ouster,” I went on, “Filipinos returned to their old trivial pursuits. Media folks reverted to their pre-martial law habits of sniping at anything and everything (one columnist poked fun at the people around Aquino of Spanish descent — as though that mattered in a melting-pot country like the Philippines); a defeated presidential candidate, a former journalist, has agitated for the establishment of a separate Muslim federation; deposed officials of the Marcos regime (most of them privy to and part of Marcos’ web of corruption) refuse to acknowledge defeat; and the leftists, discredited for having boycotted the election, remain recalcitrant, threatening the lives of their compatriots. All these delay the national recovery which this fractious country so desperately needs.”

Each of those books reconstructed the events which galvanized Filipinos into action and mesmerized a watching world. “Filipinos like to refer to the event as a ‘revolution’ but some cynics call it a grand fiesta, which it may well have been,” I wrote, “given its bizarre moments that were mainly carried out by Manila’s elite and middle classes, reinforced by the city’s urban masses. (The Marcos loyalists who claim the revolt did not involve the entire country are right, since only a fraction of the population around the archipelago actively participated in the rebellion.) What was true was that Filipinos got rid of the overstaying dictator and installed the venerated housewife believed to possess the virtues her Catholic countrymen admire but seldom practice.”

Joaquin’s book graphically describes Marcos’ hasty departure from Malacañang: “In a moment of shock or a fit of panic Marcos had shitted in his pants… one of the last things Marcos did in the palace was to defile it.”

“Nine Letters,” written by two women, overflowed with hubris: “The Filipino is a special breed of man, we Filipinos are special people.”

The “People Power” book was titled “The greatest democracy ever told.” The text viewed the event through mystical eyes; its gushing prose portrayed the revolt as a religious experience, hence the book’s dedication to “Mary, the Mother of God.”

The most impressive of the post-Edsa publications was printed in Hong Kong, featuring foreign and Filipino writers and photographers. Its superb color spread brought to vivid life all the events leading up to the uprising, as well as the four-day drama itself. I wrote that “Images of the initial tension, desperate bravado, ecstatic victory and ensuing mayhem combine to highlight this extraordinary chapter of Philippine history, from Benigno Aquino’s assassination to his widow’s astonishing victory. The people wanted an end to the established politics of plunder and these books are testimonies to that wish. Filipinos, now that the thrills are over, should buckle down to the hard job of ensuring that the struggle was not in vain.”

The younger generation may view Edsa as just four letters denoting a national holiday and little else. For those still struggling with the misery of corruption and poverty which Cory Aquino did not magically overcome and which her son did not alleviate, that brief Filipino version of Camelot left a taste of ashes on their tongues.

Today’s political climate in an administration claiming to be populist but evincing fascistic tendencies finds the nation embroiled in the usual turmoil, as history is once again being rewritten. Will the hoped-for happy ending be hijacked once again, and the ideals fostered by the Edsa event be ambushed to stagnate on the wayside?

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Isabel Escoda has been writing for the Inquirer since the 1980s.