People Power: From revolution to
riot By Marco Garrido
MANILA
- The EDSA Revolution of 1986 - known throughout the
world as "People Power" - did more than end 20 years of
Marcos rule. It seemingly cured a nation that had, along
with the Marcoses, slipped into decadence, and it had
done so without violence, through a collective act of
conscience. The spirit of renewal, of restored national
dignity, and of possibility radiated outwards, inspiring
pro-democracy movements from Poland to South Korea.
Corazon Aquino declared, as if surprised by the
conviction the revolution had instilled in her, "It is
true: the Filipino is brave, the Filipino is honorable,
the Filipino is great."
This week marks the 18th
anniversary of the EDSA Revolution, or EDSA 1, as it has
come to be known after the People Power manifestations
of EDSA 2 and 3 - the one successfully deposing
president Joseph "Erap" Estrada, the other
unsuccessfully reaffirming his presidency. With each
recurrence, the moral mandate defining People Power has
dissipated. What had first arrived as a balm has
returned, and threatens to return again, as a bane,
heralding division instead of unity.
EDSA 1:
A revolution of conscience On the evening of
February 22, 1986, crowds begin amassing along Epifanio
de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in response to the summons
of the Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin.
President Ferdinand Marcos' minister of defense, Juan
Ponce Enrile, and his vice chief of staff, Fidel V
Ramos, along with 200 supporters, barricade themselves
inside the military camps Aguinaldo and Crame.
They have just concluded a press conference
accusing Marcos of committing massive fraud in the snap
elections held two weeks earlier. Corazon Aquino, they
declared, is the rightful president of the republic.
Marcos calls his own press conference an hour later
urging the dissenters to "stop this stupidity".
Aquino, meanwhile, is surprised by the resorts
of rebellion. Her supporters hide her in a convent amid
rumors of assassination plots.
Even though the
transmitter broadcasting Radio Veritas, Cardinal Sin's
mouthpiece, has been destroyed, people continue to amass
along EDSA in front of the camps.
A marine
armored force makes for the camps but is stopped 1,500
meters from its target by a barricade of tens of
thousands of people. The marine commander threatens to
open fire if the people don't disperse. The people
remain. They kneel before the tanks reciting the rosary.
They give the soldiers food and hand them yellow
flowers. Yolanda Lacuesta later recounts: "I used to
hate the military and the police, but on Sunday I found
myself preparing sandwiches for them. I heard over the
radio that they needed food ... I remembered all the
times I had cursed them during rallies and was amazed
now that I walked so far and worked so hard for them."
The marines withdraw peacefully.
The next day
seven helicopter gunships encircle the camps with orders
to fire. Instead, the pilots land inside the camps and
defect.
Marcos appears on government-owned
Channel 4 and declares that he will never accede to the
rebels' demands. General Fabian Ver interrupts the
president on-air and asks permission to finish off the
rebels. Marcos makes a show of restraining Ver. Suddenly
Channel 4 goes off air - the rebels have taken the
station - and comes on again flashing the logo: "This is
Channel 4 serving the people again."
On February
25, three days after Enrile's and Ramos' defection,
Aquino sets up a provisional government and is sworn in
at Club Filipino. Marcos broadcasts his own inauguration
from Malacanang Palace an hour later. The signal is cut.
The Marcoses flee for Clark Airbase aboard four US
helicopters, then fly to Hawaii. The people surge into
Malacanang.
The dictator was toppled, in
Aquino's words, "by a revolution of peace, prayers,
rosaries, radios and, above all, raw human courage".
EDSA 2: A demonstration of
indignation While EDSA 2, like the EDSA
Revolution, was also primarily about moral rectification
- both were expressions of outrage against moral
degeneracy - the issues at its heart were simply less
urgent. Estrada may have been a heavy drinker and
womanizer, and frequent stories of indecent proposals
and all-night drinking sprees at Malacanang may have
scandalized the morally fastidious middle class, but,
compared with the former dictator, his sins were venial.
Marcos committed plunder on a grand scale and regularly
resorted to all manners of terror, including the torture
and murder of political enemies - acts Estrada, in his
simple loutishness, would seem incapable of executing.
The impeachment case against Estrada was
grounded mainly on charges of graft and corruption -
charges, it is worth remembering, that not even Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, who replaced Estrada, has escaped.
On October 16, 2000, governor Chavit Singson of
Ilocos Sur accuses his friend of receiving kickbacks
worth hundreds of millions of pesos from gambling and
tobacco. These charges, along with Estrada's rumored
profligacy and his mishandling of the economy, foment
calls for his resignation. The next month the House of
Representatives files an impeachment case against him.
The next day a national protest cites him for losing
"moral ascendancy" and incompetence.
During the
impeachment trial, a bank executive testifies that
Estrada concealed P500 million (US$8.9 million at the
current exchange rate) in an account under the name Jose
Velarde. An envelope purportedly containing proof that
Estrada and Velarde are one and the same and that
Estrada hid his ill-gotten gains under various aliases
is submitted as evidence.
By a margin of one
vote (11-10), the 11 senators owing allegiance to
Estrada bar the opening of the envelope on grounds of
its "immateriality". The news cameras pan to catch "No"
senator Tessie Oreta-Aquino (Cory's sister-in-law)
dancing triumphantly as "Yes" senator Loren Legarda
breaks down in tears. The prosecutors walk out of the
senate.
These images, the Dancing Lady and the
Crying Lady, galvanize civil society and the Catholic
Church. Cardinal Sin exhorts the faithful to go to the
EDSA shrine and stay there "until good has conquered
evil".
The people obey. The crowd swells to
100,000, and includes heroes of the EDSA Revolution,
former presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos. Over
the next three days the number of protesters triples.
They form a human chain along EDSA. Key members of the
Estrada administration resign, including more than half
his cabinet. The military and police withdraw their
support from the president.
A beleaguered
Estrada appears on TV and urges the impeachment trial to
continue. He says he has instructed his lawyers to open
the controversial envelope, and if he is ultimately
convicted, he will resign but not until then. His
overtures are rejected out of hand.
An hour
later, Estrada appears on TV a second time. He proposes
a snap election in May in which he will not run. The
protesters respond by giving him until 6 o'clock the
next morning to vacate his office - or else suffer their
march to Malacanang.
The next day the Supreme
Court unanimously declares the office of president
vacant. Arroyo is inaugurated soon thereafter, but not
without some grumbling. The placard "Erap's ouster is
the people's will but Gloria is not the people's choice"
captures the note of dissent, but reservations are set
aside amid the euphoria of the moment.
Estrada
formally expresses his doubts about the
constitutionality of his ouster, steps down from office,
and goes home. Since the events of EDSA 2, no consensus
except an elite consensus has emerged regarding its
constitutionality and appropriateness. The extent of its
fallout in national divisiveness becomes agonizingly
clear only three months later.
EDSA 3:
Resentment run riot If EDSA 2 was considered a
corrective to a morally bankrupt presidency, EDSA 3 can
be considered a corrective to the moralizing of EDSA 2.
The mainly middle-class forces of EDSA 2 refuse to
include what they deign the "May Day Riots" in the
People Power tradition. They claim it lacked the moral
clarity of the first two EDSAs, that it was violent, and
that it was largely orchestrated by pro-Estrada forces
carting people from the provinces in jeepneys or
seducing their participation with cash, free food and
even drugs. In short, unlike the first two EDSAs, EDSA 3
was profane in spirit and body.
The point is
missed, however, that EDSA 3 was a continuation of EDSA
2; it was its counterpoint and, as such, made a point as
legitimate as the point scored in EDSA 2. If EDSA 2
expressed indignation at presidential incompetence, EDSA
3 expressed outrage at elite presumptuousness. Estrada
may have been judged unfit for office by the middle
class, but the masa still loved him as their
president, and perhaps now more than ever now that he
had become the object of bourgeois contempt.
On
April 26, 2001, in reaction to Estrada's arrest on
charges of graft and plunder, crowds, composed mainly of
the poor, converge along EDSA. With congressional
elections around the corner, pro-Estrada candidates
exploit the opportunity to campaign. They valorize the
deposed leader and spout pro-poor slogans. The numbers
build. Estrada's wife and children appear to plead their
father's case. The speeches grow more militant and the
crowd, stewing in the summer heat, grows increasingly
restless.
On May 1, as a precautionary measure,
Estrada is airlifted out of Camp Crame to an undisclosed
location. Malacanang orders the crowd dispersed. The
candidates, worked up into a frenzy, order the crowds to
"besiege Malacanang" - words they later claim are taken
out of context. The crowd marches toward the Palace.
They maul a policeman along the way and pick up weapons
- stones, steel pipes, wooden planks. They overturn
buses and jeepneys and burn them; they ram other
commandeered vehicles into police ranks. They assault
journalists after posing for their cameras. To ward off
attacks, journalists feign loyalty to Estrada by
conspicuously wearing Erap armbands. An observer notes:
"Only two kinds of faces were on the rioters' faces:
either that of sheer hate or rage or, worse, twisted joy
in the havoc they were causing."
The same
candidates that incited the crowd now deny their
participation and claim, instead, to have tried to
contain the horde. President Arroyo declares a state of
rebellion, and the police and military, bombarded by all
manner of available missiles, retaliate with tear gas
and rubber bullets. The crowds retreat, looting stores
along the way, smashing car windows, and even trying to
make off with a soft-drink vending machine.
EDSA now EDSA 3, as the running
argument against EDSA 2, can be said to have continued
after the May Day Riot and well into the election season
- to have, in fact, motivated its turbulence. The
Magdalo soldiers' putsch in July (which Estrada possibly
financed), the Jose Pidal scandal in September
(patterned after the Jose Velarde expose), the move to
impeach Chief Justice Hilario Davide in November
(purportedly revenge against the man who presided over
Estrada's impeachment trial) - it would seem that every
two months an EDSA 4 threatens to erupt.
"EDSA
II has become a nightmare," read an editorial by the
Philippine Daily Inquirer on the third anniversary of
the second EDSA; "it has become a millstone around the
neck of its children."
To be sure, the
politicians have attempted to paper over the division
demarcated by EDSA 2 and 3. They have shuffled places to
make the choice between candidates Fernando Poe Jr and
Arroyo less of a choice between EDSA 2 and 3 - less of a
choice, that is, along class lines. The Crying Lady has
become Poe's running mate; several "No" senators have
been included in Arroyo's senatorial slate.
But
the argument dividing EDSA 2 and 3 goes beyond politics.
It is more than just about the fate of Estrada. It is an
argument between the middle and lower classes over the
fate of the nation with respect to its leaders. This
argument, over populist versus elitist leadership, runs
so deep that it is doubtful that the coming elections
will resolve it. This argument has become so explosive
that democratic institutions cannot seem to contain it.
Rather, it is EDSA that has become institutionalized as
the increasingly strident voice of a suppressed
revolution.
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