EDSA’s painful joke is on us

Only a few attended the EDSA peaceful revolution anniversary this year. One count said there were 300 policemen to watch 300 people. It may be a painful joke but it is a way of saying so few turned up. The event, once known and praised around the world has become a non-event. The event is one thing but what it promised was another. That is what disappoints – it promised so much for change and reform but as things went – from the time Cory Aquino became the president it went from bad to worse.

It also created the 1987 Constitution that cannot be amended or changed. It ensures the status quo would remain. It was a victory by our privileged oligarchy.

A citizenry gathered into the streets in protest believing it was the way to revolution whether peaceful or otherwise. That revolution never came except as beautiful speeches, songs and other frills.

As one of those who took part in working for a more enlightened citizenry and give power to the many, I watched sadly how the “peaceful revolution” was scuttled and lost its meaning.

It reached its apex during the Benigno “Noynoy” III presidency. If he was the heir to this glorious event those who worked for it were immensely disappointed. We did not deserve his leadership or more correctly, his non-leadership. He was the joke and the joke is on us every February of the year. Why celebrate the joke?

The bad performance of the Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III government contributed to the disappointment of so many.  That is why they no longer go to celebrate EDSA.  Many untold stories are coming out to justify the rejection.

On EDSA’s event I rejoiced because I actively worked in the Ninoy Aquino Movement International in Europe. But on my return from my 20-year exile, I met my comrades in the movement and they too were disappointed by the outcome of the event.

Cory was surrounded by a cordon sanitaire and without any political background she was putty to the very people who fought and suffered to achieve change and reform. A word was coined for them “balimbing” – a many sided fruit that changes to side with whoever was in power.

It is not the celebration of EDSA that is being resented but the repudiation of the ideas it promoted. As many politically literate would say it was not a revolution, it was a putsch.

In the coming May elections we will be given the opportunity whether to continue celebrating EDSA or stop attending the farce of an event. We will have to take a stand and reject the Aquino liberal candidates.

Change and reform are never easy.  With a strong President like Duterte who is willing to change traditional politics Filipinos are being tested to the utmost. It cannot be done in a single event. Or even a single term.

The test is less on Duterte than it is on us – are we willing to suffer, to overcome difficulty, to make sacrifices to achieve good governance?

If we are not, a confrontation is inevitable. We have the 1987 Constitution to blame. If we are not able to amend or change the Cory Constitution, confrontation becomes inevitable.

That is what happens when we rely on a single event. It will require more than EDSA celebrations. As I once wrote “we have mountains to climb and we must be strong and hardy for the task.”

The challenge to build a strong and great nation has a price to pay and unless we are prepared for it, then let us not aspire for good governance nor claim to want it.

We start by changing the way we see things. I am optimistic that we have at last reached a point when we may be ready for the change that our forefather heroes of the 1898 Revolution died for.

The world is awed by the Filipino struggle under PRRD who is bent on change through a new constitution.

I had thought that it might put off people to say that growing up as a nation may require “slaying the father,” a metaphor used by the late Senator Raul Manglapus for a painful wrenching from our colonial and oligarchic past. I was surprised that instead of being put off, readers wrote and called to say that on the contrary, they, too think it is the only way.

Many have expressed their disappointment about EDSA 1. We achieved it all too quickly, and reverted back to the comforts of our unchallenged way of life without buckling down to work for the promised reforms.

But perhaps, it did not help to think that the changes we wanted could be achieved by mere human efforts. We needed divine help or whatever it was that decided how nations, nay how humanity, must live. It was not so much about changing things than changing the way we see things.

It is a problem of how to shut out old ways stubbornly refusing to go. With this perspective of the current political crisis as a struggle between new and old politics. We hesitate to assume that responsibility because we are unsure of ourselves. We must overcome this hesitation.

New politics itself is but a prelude, a preparation – if you wish – for the more difficult challenges of true democracy. We have other mountains to climb. More important perhaps are the challenges of peace with justice, stability with honor and development with equality. They may sound a mouthful but these are what we should aim for as a nation.

Filipinos are being tested to the utmost. The test is whether we are willing to suffer, to overcome difficulty, to make sacrifices to achieve good governance.