Citizens ran like hell at Ortigas avenue, not from danger but towards it, where facing the crowd stood lines of massive tanks.
February 1986, the year of the tiger, which in Chinese culture symbolizes revolution. Likewise, a revolution began brewing—but instead of arms and fury, dissenters held flowers and rosaries.
Although, considering everything that has happened since then, was it merely a small spectacle in our history books?
What EDSA led to
Filipinos love to romanticize. We tend to see people and events at a grander scale than what they actually were. However, it’s fair to say that the 1986 People Power Revolution was a striking part of our history. The scene of crowds surrounding Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, offering food to rebel troops is something like you’d see in a fictional epic. But it was reality.
What did People Power lead to? Newly sworn President Corazon Aquino vowed to restore democracy. But the system that allowed the Marcos family to rob our country’s wealth remained intact, be it, under new means.
After the 1987 local and legislative elections, 130 out of 200 congressmen who won seats in the House of Representatives belonged to political families. 39 were relatives to political clans, and only 31 had no recorded ties. To this day, the same names continue to pop up in the electoral sphere.
Filipinos kicked out the Marcos family, but at the time, they didn’t take notice of the political dynasties that would rise up from the ashes of EDSA, taking advantage of the fever. Some were former Marcos loyalists themselves, a few tapped into the Marcos crony network, and others butted in with Aquino’s reformist movement. The constitution had numerous provisions to be defined by congress, including the law against dynasties. But given how both the House and the Senate were dominated by political families, it never saw the light of day.
Years later, corruption fragmented into different people and groups. It’s no longer one President and his associates taking most of the pie for themselves—now, multiple personalities want their slices too. In 2013, a massive controversy hit headlines, when the Commission of Audit announced a report that estimated P6.2 billion of Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) allocated to public officials were channeled to 82 bogus non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Subsequently, multiple senators and congressmen were implicated. Worst of all, such anomalies didn’t stop there, and scandal after scandal continues to pop up to this day.
What EDSA was not
The People Power Revolution was an event worth commemorating. But it isn’t enough to simply honor that past when corruption continues to plague society. Democracy may have been restored, but our system remains flawed. While EDSA was an inspiring event to many, it did not set a new standard in Philippine politics. Instead, our standards have only declined because most are too satisfied with the bare minimum.
