Category: edsa

The Edsa Shrine

A WASTED OPPORTUNITY
An Opinion
By Godofredo U. Stuart, Jr., MD

I wasn’t here in 1986, but i watched it in television fragments, mesmerized, gripped and shivering in elation. I have relived it many times, through my sister Angela Stuart-Santiago’s writings of those historic days, and later, again, transplanted by a magic carpet of story-telling, page by page, uploading the English and Tagalog versions of her Edsa Works onto the web site: The Original People Power Revolution and Walang Himala! Himagsikan sa Edsa. I heard the tanks. Watched the swelling masses of people. The political defections. The rapidly multiplying cast of characters. The improbable convergence of disparate elements and events, fueled by years of festering anger and frustration, with the lumpen proletariat providing noise and number, marching into the crescendo of that historic crossroad in EDSA. Four days that galvanized the nation and transfixed the world. The culmination of the rivalry between Marcos and Ninoy, climaxing non-violently with the ouster of a dictator and the end of his regime of oppression and terror.

And in its wake, the birth of people power.

Years before, when Ninoy was assassinated, I found catharsis in doing a small collage artwork which I titled: WHERE ARE THE HEROES? In those four EDSA days, the hero came to life.

Seek no more, the hero. There they were. There it was, the collective hero: the masa.

Alas, it was too grand, too sublime, too extraordinary a victory to attribute to the populace. In the epilogue, everyone started dipping their fingers into the hero-bowl. Attributions and claims came from all fronts: CIA (of course, always in the cast, real or imagined), the high-end political defectors and military rebels (without us, it couldn’t have happened), the burgis-power-elites (only because we allowed it to happen). In the end, the miracle brokers won. With nuns standing their grounds on advancing tanks, a Cardinal power-player, the bloodless coup, and a populace steeped in religiosity – it was no hard-sell. The Miracle of Edsa.

A few years later, they built the Edsa Shrine.

Personally, I was greatly disappointed. And it lingers. Hey, I’m no miracle-hater. I like miracles. I like the inevitable clash of the debunkers and the faithful, the desperate application of quantum physics and singularities by the miracle slayers to the unabashed piety and adoration of the worshipers. And I’m no anti-Marian zealot either. Although I have became the nominal-situational Catholic, my roots are severely Catholic. I can still recite half the mass in Latin. I have a reassuring accumulation of plenary indulgences for my thanalogical needs and was avidly Pro-venial sin and Pro-purgatory for my certain detour needs on the way to heaven’s gates. Whenever the opportunity, I take Tiaong rural villagers to the Lady of Manaog shrine to invoke Her help in ridding them of their dastardly addictions and aberrant and sinful ways of life.

And with this affirmation of my Catholic roots, my point is:

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enrile & EDSA #cj trial

22 feb 2012.  day 22.  at the end of questions for the prosecution, senator alan peter cayetano reminded of feb 22 1986 and thanked the presiding judge juan ponce enrile “for what he did” then, or something like that.  enrile brushed him off: “that’s all in the past…” and at once went back to the task at hand.

it’s quite ironic that of all the highlights in his political life, it is EDSA — the one that made him a people power hero — that enrile does not really like to remember or celebrate.  very disappointed in the cory administration, he supported coup attempts post-EDSA and openly expressed regret about giving way to cory in ’86.

but, really, in feb ’86, given people power’s clear clamor for cory to replace marcos, enrile had no choice but to stand aside and let cory take her oath as president.  the people would have settled for no one else; besides, they had no idea, didn’t have a clue, that enrile considered himself better qualified to run a government.  and because he had denied marcos’s accusation of a failed coup plot, and people had bought into cardinal sin’s assurance that the military rebels were “our friends”, it was easy for the people to wax romantic and think that he and ramos had defected to support cory’s cause.  like knights in shining armor.

what if enrile had not denied the coup plot.  what if he had told the truth at the feb 22 presscon — that the plan was to install a revolutionary council that would include cory and cardinal sin.  how would that have changed the outcome?  i guess it would have meant a divided people: cory would have rejected all talk of power-sharing with the military that arrested and jailed her husband for 7 years.  and a people divided would have been to marcos’s advantage.

it bears pointing out that in EDSA the conflict was no longer between marcos and cory — panalo na si cory by the 7th day of the crony boycott, marcos would have folded, EDSA or no EDSA.  the conflict was between cory and enrile.  cory who wanted nothing to do with enrile; enrile who didn’t think much of cory’s leadership skills, if any.  but it was out of their hands.  it was the people — by their sheer presence, in huge numbers, stopping tanks and braving death, unarmed — who were in control, and they wanted cory in the place of marcos, and they wanted enrile and ramos and RAM in the place of ver and the generals, and that decided the matter.  cory and enrile were simply forced to negotiate and to reconcile their differences.

unfortunately the reconciliation was short-lived.  too soon the people dispersed, the power dissipated, and the differences re-surfaced and proved irreconcileable.  perhaps if the people had been aware, informed, of the dynamics and issues between the two, and if they had remained vigilant and on people-power mode post-EDSA, maybe then, cory and enrile would have gotten the hang of reconciliation over time, and the nation would probably be in a better place.

still and all, EDSA was fantastic, an extraordinary event, a timeless lesson on how to effect change non-violently.  enrile should not regret EDSA.  if he had not given way to cory, if he had contested cory’s claim to the presidency instead, he would probably not be senate president and presiding judge of the senate impeachment court today.

post EDSA: what happened to gen. tadiar

last feb 28, after reading doronila’s and de quiros’s inquirer columns of the day, i wrote a letter to the editor saying that they were only partly right, attributing EDSA to the courage of the people on the streets; the same with former president fvr who attributed it to the split military.   i pointed out that they neglected to give credit to the loyalist marines general artemio tadiar and colonel braulio balbas who were given the kill-order but defied their superiors.   i said they were the unsung heroes of EDSA and they were more heroic than the soldiers who defected and then hid behind the skirts of nuns and other civilians.

inquirer published it eight days later with the title Edsa I’s unsung heroes more heroic than defectors.   three days later i got an email from glenn tadiar, son of gen. tadiar, thanking me for the kind words and relating what happened to his father post-EDSA.   i asked if i could post his response in my blog and he said yes, but on second thought i suggested he send it first to the inquirer, they just might publish it, and i would post it then.   it’s been 16 days, and inquirer might never publish it – medyo di na uli uso ang EDSA stories — so here it is.   thanks again, glenn.

Dear Ms. Stuart-Santiago,

I would like to thank you for your kind words regarding my father”s actions in your letter that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on March 09, 2011. Twenty five years ago on this date, my father was at our assigned quarters in Fort Bonifacio on the tenth or eleventh day of his house arrest, ordered by then General Ramos. His decision to not follow the orders given to him on the second day of the Edsa Revolution, the decision to not throw in his lot with the rebels, the decision to continue serving President Marcos in a defensive manner, the decision to order Col. Balbas back to Fort Bonifacio on the third day all must have sat heavily in his mind as he contemplated what appeared to be the end of his professional military career.

For me, it was heartbreaking to see him so but what solace or comfort could a 17 year old son offer him during those dark times? What followed was eight months of house arrest punctuated by investigations by the PCGG hatchet men due to my father’s perceived close ties with President Marcos. Did they find anything out of the ordinary? Apparently not for he was later on given a new posting as the Deputy Commander, Subic Naval Base Command in October. He knew deep down that his career was essentially over since this posting was a dead end in the AFP. One thing I love about him was, despite being given a basket of lemons, instead of being sour or bitter about it, he went on to make lemonade and enjoyed his six years at this post interacting with his counterparts in the US Armed Forces, playing regular golf games many times a week at the world class golf course in Binictican and looking out for the welfare of all those assigned to his command.

When he was promoted to Brigadier General in 1984, he was one of the youngest Generals in the AFP. By the time of his retirement in December 1992, he was one of the oldest Brigadier Generals having served the longest time “in grade”. If he had any bitterness or disappointment that many officers junior to him went on to higher positions and rank than himself, he did not show it but what man would not have a little something in his heart? One thing he could be proud of was that he was the only officer of flag rank promoted by Marcos to have survived the purges of the Aquino administration. They could find nothing.

Thank you again for pointing out something that most have already forgotten. My dad was a hero.

God bless you and yours.

Respectfully yours,

Glenn Tadiar

social media as mosquito press

biyaheng EDSA: saan ba papunta? —  this was the question posed by ateneo’s politicial science organization’s politalk last january 31 that katrina and i attended.   my answer (via a powerpoint presentation by ina) was to point out that in both EDSA and edsa dos when we ousted marcos and erap, what empowered the people was the access to information.

pre-EDSA the mosquito press dared defy censorship and tell the nation about the hidden wealth, the fake medals, the human rights violations atbp.   pre-edsados, the live tv broadcasts, with replays, of erap’s impeachment trial in the senate informed the nation about jueteng connections, secret bank accounts, stock market scams atbp.

a next EDSA, one that would aspire for deepseated change, would call for no less than a politicized media and an adequately informed and politicized citizenry uniting behind common goals.

in 1986 with the liberation of media, television was awash with public affairs talk shows.   the people were hungry for information after 14 years of censorship.   25 years later, there is not a single public affairs talk show on free tv.   where did they all go?   why does free tv offer nothing but inane entertainment, mostly soap operas and showbiz gossip?   it’s called the dumbing down of the filipino, and we have television to thank for it.   people are so inadequately informed about national affairs, it’s impossible to come to a consensus on anything, or even intelligently participate in discourse.

read william esposo‘s When the media become the bad news and a national problem:

Philippine media, especially television, will have to account for the big Information Gap in our country. Media are the principal means for acquiring information and a look at those top rating television shows will show that more emphasis is placed on what the Filipinos want rather than on what they need to know.

…Notice the programming profile of the top three TV networks, ABS-CBN, GMA Network and ABC, and how entertainment shows dominate the daily program schedules. In a country like ours with a serious Information Gap, that could be considered irrelevant programming. Marketing considerations were allowed to overrule the dictates of public service – unacceptable when you consider that these TV networks were awarded their respective franchises by the government to operate on the condition that they will provide public service.

… In a country like ours where a lot of things are not done right, media cannot pretend that everything is hunky-dory and just praise the government. We once had a media situation where fantasia and fiction became the main staple. This was during the period of martial law from September 22, 1972 to February 24, 1986 when the government television station was liberated. We should not allow that to happen again.

… A gnawing issue that also hounds Philippine media is the ownership structures of most media companies here – specifically those media companies that are linked to political interests. Television and radio should have been isolated from such compromised situations. However, instead of protecting public interest, the system of broadcast franchising also became a tool for political patronage. Try applying for a broadcast franchise if you’re not well connected.

… Media should be protecting the public from the long arm of the oligarchy that dominates political and economic power here. However, that will not happen when a media company is also owned by oligarchs or businessmen who are aligned with them. Under such a situation public service will certainly give way to self service.

clearly what we need are conscienticized oligarchs and businessmen who truly want to make things right, pay back, pay forward, whatever, by sponsoring public affairs tv programs that would create a demand for politicized conscienticized media practitioners who will go beyond echoing press releases re “growth” and “good economic fundamentals” and who will know that it’s not good news when there are lots of buyers of philippine retail treasury bonds (worth P100 B issued last february) because all it means is that the aquino government is going the way of presidents past and getting us deeper and deeper into debt.  among other things.

i have a dream that one day, the big businessmen who invest multimillions in  mindless entertainment day in day out would take their corporate social responsibility to heart, truly put their money where their mouth is, by investing too, or investing instead, in public discourse and nation-building.

until then, don’t knock social media — blogs, facebook, twitter — because these are today’s mosquito press.