People Power & Lessons From EDSA

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" — Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)


We have to share to everyone born after EDSA, the context of those heady days in February 1986 when the Filipino people decided to end twenty years of Marcos rule. We have to explain that EDSA ( Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) is the historic road where people converged to protest the results of the February 7, 1986 snap elections. The Commission on Elections ( Comelec) final tally, then, had Ferdinand Marcos as winner while Namfrel, the poll watcher had Cory Aquino as winner. The walkout of our early EDSA`heroes in the 29 Comelec computer technicians was one of the early events that culminated in the massing of the people at EDSA now called the People Power Revolution. The Filipino people were convinced that Cory Aquino won the election but lost in the 1986 Comelec count. The Filipino people power revolution inspired many national protests worldwide. Of course, it can also be said that the EDSA event was a culmination of protests that for us was first manifested in the students’ protests called the First Quarter Storm ( FQS or the first three months of 1970) of the early seventies. Two years after FQS, martial law was declared in September 21, 1972. The seventies to the mid eighties was a martial law period that was legally justified as constitutional authoritarianism. And that is why, our slogan then was “ what is legal is not necessarily just.”

In hindsight, the message at EDSA is about a people believing in basic morality and the meaning of good governance through its direct exercise of democracy through people power.

Those of us in Davao who were a very part of what we fondly call the yellow color revolution of 1986 are kind of protesting the naming of the EDSA revolt as just an imperial Manila phenomenon because for many Fridays after the 1986 official Comelec count declared Ferdinand Marcos to be the winner of the January 7, 1986 elections, the Davao yellow Friday movement began. As yellow is the symbol of change, this phenomenon can be owned and adopted by all aspiring for good governance.

Yet, as we see so much of the same problems besetting our nation since twenty years ago, it is difficult to celebrate the meaning of EDSA. Today, the same problems are still with us: failing agrarian reform and lack of food security, assassinations and human rights violations, corruption, so much social inequality, etc.

So, at this juncture in time, it is good to ask if people have been organized for good social change. Have we organized a constituency for social change – at the level of villages and barangays - which believes that real power comes from the people? Policy reforms are traditionally legislated by those in power or ruling class and these policies are far removed from the wishes of the poor and powerless.

So, in practical terms, the ballot and whom we vote for is our modern expression of democracy. In this transition to the next six years of leadership in the Philippines, we must choose well because as they say
“ six years is a very long time for a bad president….”