So it’s been thirty years since I and my UP law classmates marched up and down EDSA, from Santolan to Ortigas, as we expressed our collective desire for change.Thirty years since I was at Gate 1 of Camp Aguinaldo in the early hours of February 23, wanting to go inside to visit my boss, Assemblyman Renato L. Cayetano, who was holed up in the Defense Ministry with his friend, mentor and boss, Juan Ponce Enrile, one of the four key players at EDSA. (I wasn’t allowed in, and it was at the gate that I first saw my boss’ children Pia, Alan, Ren and Lino, who were with their mom also inquiring about the well-being of the father of the family. I think we collectively were wondering whether the men in that Defense Ministry building would eventually emerge alive — or dead. Who knew at that point?)
Thirty years since I hugged Nieves Confesor, then a Ministry of Labor executive to wish her a “happy new year”. She hugged me back but whispered “I hope you’re right” and she was rightfully concerned. A close confidante of Blas Ople, she must have been wondering whether his ouster would also end her own career at the Ministry; of course at that time none of us could imagine that she would herself end up Secretary of Labor under a President Fidel V. Ramos, only to lose that post due to a crisis in Singapore.
Thirty years ago that country was ripped apart, with the divide being between those who were pro- and anti-Marcos. The divide was true even within families, as it was in mine; our elders were sympathetic to Marcos. In part I think it was because they were government employees; in part also because they were survivors of the Japanese occupation and to them Ninoy represented a family that “sided with the enemy” and heck maybe even profited from it.
But down the middle our country was divided, and it is remarkable that we were able to work back from the brink and move on. Except that, some people will complain, moving on includes not extracting total and complete revenge from the Marcoses, especially now that one of them — the only son and namesake of the ousted President, no less, may very well end up Vice President of the Philippines after the May elections.
Imagine that: free elections that are the fruits of EDSA may very end up restoring a Marcos into the highest echelons of government! That’s the price we pay for democracy yes?
Actually my “EDSA Experience” began on an uncomfortable note. I was hosting three friends (two girls and a guy) in our house in UP the afternoon of the 22nd, when our house phone rang (there were no cellphone yet then). I was surprised when my mom alerted me to the fact that the caller was the father of one of the two girls; he wasn’t supposed to know she was there! But he wasn’t as mad at her being there as he was concerned that she should come home immediately – Ramos and Enrile had by that time retreated to Aguinaldo and no one knew if and when all hell would break lose!
That’s also why I was at the gate of Aguinaldo as soon as I could get there. At that time I was the legislative assistant of Rene Cayetano, and in turn he was law office partner of Juan Ponce Enrile in the PECABAR Law Office. Cayetano was the first of a line of bosses I was lucky to have, who treated me more than just as an employee or assistant; so you could understand why I felt that if he could lay his life on the line then maybe it was worth my doing that too.
Thankfully the late Butz Aquino made that call, and within 24 hours after Enrile and Cayetano and their colleagues holed up in Aguinaldo, people began massing around the camp. By then that included my classmates and contemporaries at the UP College of Law; someone even climbed up the arch of Camp Crame to attach a UP Law streamer that has been captured for posterity in photos of those days.
I remember my elders looking pained during these days, my dad conceding that there seemed no way that Marcos could survive this. He too was concerned that the peaceful gathering at EDSA could turn bloody at any moment, so he asked us to stay home and not join the crowd. In compliance I went into my room. But (at least in those days) the windows of the houses on UP Campus had no grills, so I escaped through my bedroom window, passing through the santan bushes to grab a jeepney ride out of the campus, with my younger brother in tow.
All these happened thirty years ago; I was only 23 then. I liked Marcos – he was the reason why I dreamt of entering the UP College of Law and why I loved debates and why I even loved copying his voice, but I also believed that government needed change and having one man in power for so long wasn’t good for the political and social and even economic environment.
Thirty years later I still think it was good we had change then, even if just for change’s sake, but whether or not we are better off now can be debatable. In many respects EDSA was a restoration — of democracy’s motherhood principles at the very least, as it was of the old oligarchy; but it too was a statement by a usually docile people that we too have our limits.
And boy, have very manipulative people found ways to capitalise on those limits!
After EDSA it seems no stealing from government coffers could be as bad, so everybody tried to steal and some have gotten away with it. The Marcoses have been used as a cloak to disguise succeeding plunder – “who could be as bad as them?”. At the same time no government seems to have come close to the so-called “edifice complex” of Imelda which has left for posterity such structures as the CCP, the PICC, the Heart and Lung Centers and even the San Juanico Bridge; and the highways and byways being carved out today as a means to alleviate our horrendous traffic problems were highways and byways planned as early as the Marcos years.
Maybe the biggest failure of EDSA lies in the failure of the Filipino to follow-up on its so-called gains. We’re never good at follow up anyway. And this why, thirty years after EDSA, many of the issues that peppered the discussions our elders had over coffee or weekend mahjong remain issues that pepper our own discussions today – widespread poverty, inequitable distribution of wealth, an irresponsible oligarchy, corruptible men and women in the bureaucracy, etc. We complain of crooks and idiots in government , but we keep re-electing them and their kin. And we still have killings of media men, disappearing activists, and some ailment of cronyism.
Only the faces of the perpetrators and the victims have changed.
One last tidbit. After Cayetano lost in the 1987 legislative elections to Dante Tinga, he introduced me to Enrique Zobel who then took me in as his executive assistant. One time we got talking about EDSA, and Zobel confided to me that before Fidel Ramos rushed from Alabang to Aguinaldo, he had called up Enrique Zobel, an old friend and village “neighbor” to ask Zobel to fly Mrs. Ramos out of Alabang should something happen to him at EDSA.
But who knew what would happen? Cory would become President, and Ramos would succeed her; Enrile and Cayetano would have a falling out and end up Senate colleagues; two of Cayetano’s children would succeed him to the Senate; Cory’s only son would become President because of her death and now Marcos’ only son Bongbong seems to have an outside chance to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency!
Thirty years after EDSA , we have a country run like hell indeed!