Turning 20

Twenty years ago today, The Philippine STAR hit the newsstands for the first time. Our banner story, a scoop of our top crime reporter at the time, Alex Fernando, was about a supporter of Corazon Aquino being beaten up by Marcos loyalists because he wore a yellow t-shirt during a loyalist rally in Rizal Park. The guy died on the way to the Philippine General Hospital.

Earlier that month, the loyalists had also taken over the Manila Hotel in an attempt to duplicate the first people power revolt and topple the Aquino administration. The people refused to cooperate and the loyalists eventually went home, leaving hotel personnel to clean up an enormous mess.

The rest of the year the nation was distracted by continuing attempts to topple the government and the breakup of the forces that led to the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship.

Since that first edition on July 28, 1986, The STAR has grown from an eight-page newspaper without advertisements and no Sunday edition to what you now get seven days a week. Of our three founding members, Betty Go-Belmonte and Art Borjal have passed on, with only chairman and publisher Max V. Soliven left to guide the newspaper.

Several years ago the bosses forced us to use computers by confiscating our typewriters. Today we don’t know how we survived without computers. Alex Fernando is now our deputy managing editor.

Like the newspaper, our nation has also grown in the past two decades, although the most tangible growth seems to be in the size of the country’s population and the number of Filipinos working overseas. Change? Looking back, what keeps playing in your head is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Twenty years after that loyalist "revolt" at the Manila Hotel, we have not outgrown plots to topple the government. Prominent families still hedge their bets, with relatives supporting different sides in a political conflict. Some of our best soldiers are undergoing preliminary investigation for a possible court-martial in connection with a coup plot last February.

The latest coup plot was unique in that it purportedly involved a strange alliance between military officers and communist rebels. Except for that, it was no different from previous efforts to recreate the original people power revolt, with businessmen and politicos and personalities angling for a job in a new government providing logistical support to the coup plotters.

As in the past, the plot also involved a religious component. The Catholic Church remains as deeply involved in political matters as it was in 1986, and sees no conflict between its self-appointed political role and the constitutional provision on the separation of church and state.

We have one of the few remaining communist insurgencies in the world, fueled in large part by our failure to give justice and a better life to the poor. Imelda Marcos, at the height of the dictatorship, borrowed a quote from George Orwell and famously crowed that some are more equal than others. This holds true today. When the law doesn’t want to catch up with you, you can get away with murder. Journalists, militant activists, lawyers and even judges are being gunned down with impunity all over the country on orders of people who are above the law.

Or consider that Manila City Hall official accused of shooting dead a jeepney driver and threatening to gun down the victim’s two relatives as well because the official couldn’t move his Fortuner out of its parking slot. The suspect, a member of a politically prominent family in the city, was positively identified, but Manila policemen gave the most disgraceful excuses not to arrest him until he could make himself scarce. Top Philippine National Police officials won’t touch the case – and this is just a little-known adviser to the mayor. We shouldn’t be surprised if the victim’s relatives are recruited by the Alex Boncayao Brigade. When communist rebels promise justice, they deliver.

The slow pace of reforms is glaring in the electoral system.

The first people power revolt capped protests over the results of the 1986 snap presidential election, with the opposition led by Corazon Aquino accusing Ferdinand Marcos of stealing the vote. The defects in the voting system that allowed poll fraud during the Marcos regime are still in place, with "dagdag-bawas" or vote shaving and padding schemes thrown in.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. documented how he became a victim of dagdag-bawas. Yet little has been done to prevent a repeat of that form of cheating.

Poll automation is a disaster, with corruption suspected in a P1.2-billion contract.

Corruption is so bad that when Marcos’ eldest daughter Imee, a lawmaker representing her father’s home province of Ilocos Norte, says graft is worse these days than during the Marcos regime, no one disputes it.

The continuing political prominence of the Marcoses is the best reminder of how much things have remained the same in the past 20 years.

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Looking on the bright side, the nation has managed to sustain democracy for two decades. Only people who have known what it’s like to lose freedom can appreciate the restoration of democracy, warts and all. This is an achievement that cannot be taken away from the 1986 people power revolt.

The nation is also undergoing a sea change in the way it deals with political problems. After seeing the results of the second people power revolt in 2001, Filipinos are wary of taking another short cut to regime change. There are efforts, although feeble in many areas, to strengthen democratic institutions instead. Military coup plotters are getting more than 40 push-ups as punishment. The progressively weakening public response to calls for people power has taken by surprise those who continue to live in the euphoric days of EDSA I.

Reforms are underway in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Before the end of the year we might even finally see drastic changes in the Commission on Elections.

Though many sectors have stubbornly resisted reforms, and some areas such as education and public health care have deteriorated since 1986, there is always room for progress.

Today The STAR celebrates 20 years of growth, and will continue fulfilling the role of the press in the difficult task of building a free and prosperous nation.