We need a change in our political system
We know that President Rodrigo Duterte has never attended any EDSA commemoration as president. However, for this EDSA celebration, despite the fact that only less than 200 people were spotted at the EDSA Shrine (some reason they gave was due to the COVID-19), the President issued a formal statement on this day when he said that the 1986 revolution was one of the “most remarkable” events in the country’s history. Pres. Duterte then called on Filipinos to rise above “petty political differences” as the country commemorates the 34th anniversary of the People Power Revolution.
Indeed, the EDSA Revolution is a movement lauded globally that brought down a tyrannical government led by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and restored the nation’s democratic institutions. So the President said, “I therefore join the valiant heroes of EDSA and the countless others whose lives were touched by this bloodless uprising in commemorating its 34th anniversary with renewed hope that the succeeding generations of Filipinos will also have the courage, strength and determination to protect, defend, and preserve the liberties that we have won during that historic revolution.” Very well said Mr. President. But if you check the number of people at the EDSA Shrine, you will note that the opposition to your administration has become so minuscule, making them totally irrelevant.
What we need to do is work on your last three years in office to finish the EDSA Revolution by enacting laws that would put a genuine chance in our political form of government. If we have to install a parliamentary form of government, then so be it. If you wish to have a federal form, then that is also good for the Philippines. The most important thing is to move forward!
I’ve been accused of changing our history because I no longer attack the Marcoses for what they have been. But truth to tell, the Marcoses were removed in EDSA simply because they tried to change the Filipino mind to accept their kind of politics which did not work for them.
But truth to tell is that the opposition then of the Marcoses ended up as worse politicians than the people they had removed. The best example is that we accepted the rule of the political ignorant, represented by Tita Cory Aquino who admitted that she wasn’t a politician. But rather than give power to blue-bloodied politicians who love their country like Vice President Doy Laurel, she turned away from him. To think that she used the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) as her political party in the fight against the Marcoses, and in which she won her presidential bid.
Tita Cory then removed the 1973 Constitution without having Congress check it out and came up with a Freedom Constitution out of nowhere and established her own kind of dictatorship over the Philippines. Remember it was Tita Cory’s own doing that ended with the release of the criminal Jose Maria “Joma” Sison who was arrested legally for many crimes that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) committed against the Filipino people. No apologies from the Aquino family who later must have realized that the nation still suffers from the communist insurgency.
So in the end, while we removed the Marcos dictatorship, we had 30 years under the Aquino constitution where political patronage has become the order of the day; where politician even in the 17th Congress refused to support the Anti-Dynasty Bill. But it came to pass that the politics of yesterday disappear when their top leadership is no longer in power. This happened to the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), which was a monolith during the Marcos era. Then Unido also disappeared with the death of Vice President Salvador “Doy” Laurel.
Ask yourselves where is the Pwersa ng Masang Filipino of Erap now? The Nacionalista Party is gone. So has the PDP-Laban during Tita Cory’s time. They all became the Liberal Party (LP) that propped up another Aquino into Malacañang. But where is the LP today? They didn’t even use that name in the midterm elections last year, as they called themselves Otso Diretso, which is not really a political party that the ordinary Filipino knows. But this strategy backfired on the LP because all of them lost their senatorial bids.
So I dare say that the time has come for us to push forward a true blue political agenda for the Filipino people so that ordinary Filipino citizens can participate in our politics, rather than the old politics of yore, which is controlled only by a few dynastic families. So now can we do this? I dare you!
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