Inquirer 3 Mar 1998

At least the level of discourse on the Edsa Revolution has progressed from simple stuff answerable by yes or no – was Cory in Edsa or not? did Ramos hesitate to join Enrile or not? did Marcos order the soldiers to shoot or not? were the Marcoses kidnapped or not? – to a real question: When should the nation celebrate Edsa?

As an astrologer with a fetish for correct birth times, I would say it depends on what we want to celebrate.

If we want to celebrate the defection of the military reformists which led to the display of People Power, then the 22nd it is. What time? Juan Ponce Enrile says 3 p.m., when (according to my chronology) he rejected Gregorio Honasan’s and Eduardo Kapunan’s suggestion that he escape to Cagayan and decided instead to make a last stand in Camp Aguinaldo. Fidel Ramos, however, might prefer a 6:45 birth time, when together he and Enrile faced the press and announced their rebellion. And then, again, if we’re going to be true to story of Edsa, which is all about People Power, I would push for a 9 to 10 o’clock birth time, when the people first got into the picture through Butz Aquino and Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin.

But if what we want to celebrate is the inauguration of the new democracy ushered in by Corazon C. Aquino, then the 25th it is. What hour of the day? Corystas would say 10:46 a.m., when she was sworn in as President. Except that at the time, Marcos was still in Malacañang Palace and still held legitimate power. He did not leave the Palace until 9:10 p.m. and he didn’t leave Clark Air Base in Pampanga until 5 a.m. the next morning. Until either time, the old government was arguably still in place. Only when Marcos was really gone did the new democracy begin.

Actually we should be celebrating Edsa neither on the 22nd nor on the 25th but on the 23rd of February, when unarmed throngs stopped the tanks (the first of such encounters) at the EDSA-Ortigas intersection. That display of People Power, captured on satellite TV for all the world to see, not only rendered the tyrant and his army powerless, it also forced the reconciliation, for the sake of peace, of the two anti-Marcos camps (Cory’s end Enrile’s) that were poised to grab power. That mind-boggling manifestation of People Power between 2:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon of the 23rd – and none other – was the high point of Edsa.

So why haven’t we been celebrating that? Basically, because it’s taken this long for our political leaders to acknowledge that Edsa wasn’t just one big blur of miraculous events but a definite series of explainable events with a beginning, a middle, and an ed. There was no miracle in Edsa – no sick were healed, no water turned into wine, the sun didn’t dance, and the Marian apparition is all in the cardinal’s mind. Edsa was about ordinary people in great numbers who dared to confront, unarmed, the military might of the dictator and discovered in the process their extraordinary powers when united by a common intent. Walang himala! As it turned out, the formidable task of removing a dictator was well within a people’s power, and the Filipino people proved it in Edsa.

Everything that happened during those four days, from the Enrile-Ramos defection to the stunning debut of People Power to the Marcos-Ver escape can be explained. None of it happened by miracle. Enrile and Ramos, for instance, didn’t wake up on the 22nd to the voice of God telling them to drop Marcos and join Cory. They defected so that Enrile could challenge Cory for the presidency. Unfortunately for Enrile, the people wanted no other than Cory, and the rest is verifiable history, except that the defectors have yet to straighten out their twisted accounts, allowing instead the Church’s miracle myth to prosper.

The effect has been not only to diminish the people’s part in the Edsa uprising but also to place it beyond the reach of human comprehension and recreation. Unlike other peak human experiences, Edsa is one that we are not being encouraged to recreate in our minds and analyze and learn from. I suspect it’s a conspiracy (shades of Hillary’s right wing), deliberate or not, to suppress what may be perceived as subversive material.

But truth has a way of coming out. And hope springs eternal. At least now (even if it has taken 12 years) we are clear about a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Same time next year, we might even be celebrating People Power. For a change.

Inquirer 5 March 1997

Contrary to military lore, it was the people—not Fidel Ramos, not Juan Ponce Enrile, not Gregorio Honasan—who were the true heroes of Edsa.

The military defection was only a catalyst for the display of People Power. Remove the defectors, and some other catalyst would have come along eventually—perhaps a dramatic climax to Cory’s boycott campaign that was preempted by Edsa, maybe a coup d’etat of sorts in the business community (with the military reformists falling in)—and it would have worked just as stunningly.

But remove the people, and the defectors would have been wiped out. Remove the people, and there would have been no reconciliation between Cory and the reformist military. In essence, Edsa was a political exercise in conflict resolution brokered by the people.

The crucial conflict was, not between Cory and Marcos or between Ramos/Enrile/ RAM and Marcos, but between Cory and Ramos/Enrile/RAM. The two camps had a common objective, to oust Marcos and take over, but no attempts were made by either camp to join forces with the other.

With the people squarely behind her, Cory was supremely confident that she didn’t need RAM. She was convinced that on her own, through nonviolent destabilizing tactics, she could pressure Marcos to step down.

On the other hand, with Enrile’s and Ramos’s backing, RAM was supremely confident that it could remove Marcos by force and replace him with a military junta headed by Enrile. RAM was certain that the military establishment would fall in line and, eventually, the people.

That fateful Edsa weekend derailed both Cory and Ramos/Enrile/RAM, giving the people the break they needed to resolve matters once and for all. In Edsa, the people gave them no choice but to reconcile their differences and submit to the people’s will.

Cory had no choice but to reconcile with the same military that had caused her and Ninoy so much pain and suffering. Ramos/Enrile/RAM had no choice but to submit to Cory, a civilian housewife without experience in state and military affairs.

Edsa was too dramatic and decisive to ignore. Cory and Ramos/Enrile/RAM could not but bow to the people’s will, which demanded that they rise above their differences and begin anew, begin as friends.

It is said that the 50,000 to 100,000 people who left their homes and marched to Edsa that Saturday evening did so because of Jaime Cardinal Sin’s appeal over Radio Veritas that the people bring food and support to the rebels.

In fact, the cardinal had to be coaxed into calling Veritas and going on the air that first night. And it was only on his secondcall, and only on the insistence of Corystas, that the cardinal gathered the nerve to tell the people that it was all right to go to Edsa.

The cardinal’s sanction was important, but there were others—in particular, June Keithley, Cecilia Muñoz Palma, and Butz Aquino—whose endorsements were just as crucial.

An unabashed Corysta and popular TV host, Keithley gave the greatest performance of her life as the sosyal broadcaster turned rebel. Fiercely enamored of the reformists, Keithley had listeners hanging on to her every word and was the rebel military’s all-important link to the people.

Member of Parliament Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, a respected jurist and Cory supporter, was the first government official to call Radio Veritas and express support for the rebels. Her endorsement carried a lot of weight.

Ninoy’s kid brother Butz, the original street parliamentarian, was in top form. Defying his group’s decision to await orders from Cory, Butz went ahead to Camp Aguinaldo to offer his support to the rebels. It was Butz, calling direct from Camp Aguinaldo at 10:20 p.m., who first assured the people that the rebel military was prepared to follow the people’s will. It was he who first suggested a course consistent with Cory’s non-violent strategy.

Synchronous events: the people stopping tanks and Enrile crossing Edsa to join Ramos. The coincidence of the people’s peak experience with Enrile’s move indicates that there was more to the crossing than a simple consolidation of forces. Ramos had had earlier urged them to move but Enrile and RAM were reluctant to give up Aguinaldo and, perhaps more so, to give in to Ramos, who was by then perceived to be for Cory.

In a sense the dramatic crossing signified Enrile’s surrender to forces other than RAM, and it was as critical and momentous as the people’s encounter with tanks.

Just when things were looking good for the people, and just when Keithley was peaking, her stock rising with every scoop, she announced, mistakenly, that the Marcoses had left Malacañang. Unwittingly, Keithley played into what may have been a plot to discredit her and confuse the people. Though she rallied somewhat with the liberation of Channel 4, she never recovered the strength of her words.

Entertainers were quick to recover their show biz senses. Everyone wanted to do a June Keithley (in her happier credible moments). Once Channel 4 was liberated, self-serving ones took to the spotlight and hogged it.

It’s not clear who was in command, only that a group of entertainers, mostly TV stars and recording artists, was allowed to dominate the broadcast and wax euphoric hour after hour, which was terribly boring, and disappointing. But there was a warning up against leftists. And so political scientists, sociologists, historians, activists, academe, everyone intelligent, was suspect, except for the show biz clowns.

There were leftists in Edsa but they did not come as communist party members with an official agenda. They came as ordinary people and helped in the best way they knew how—improvising and manning barricades—giving nonviolence and peace a chance, and linking arms, even, with capitalists.

It is said that Edsa was not a completely Filipino revolution since the US played a major part in the abduction and exile of the Marcoses. They may as well cite, too, the help that the reformist forces received from the CIA in terms of information on Marcos’s and Ver’s moves and a direct line to the US ambassador.

Just the same, the Americans were only on the sidelines, as stunned as everyone else (Marcos and Ver, Enrile and Ramos, included) at every unexpected turn of events. The Enrile-Ramos defection caught the Americans napping. People Power knocked them out.

Just like with Enrile and Ramos, Edsa gave the anti-Cory Americans no choice but to heed the people’s will and clear the way for Cory.

Isyu 5 Mar 96

Balita ng Inquirer, Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Gregorio Honasan are coming up with the “real story” of EDSA. Hindi nga lamang malinaw kung magco-collaborate sila on one book o kung magkakanya-kanya sila. Say ko, the more the merrier. Say naman ni Duet for EDSA publisher Eggie Apostol, sana separate books, then they can call it Duets against EDSA. O di ba, ang saya?

Yeah, let’s hear it all, the sooner the better, and let’s hear it from the Marcoses and Vers, too, nang malaman na nga natin ang buong katotohanan. Only when the facts are known, and the people are in a better position to make up their own minds and become of one mind about EDSA, can we expect the bickering to stop. Only then can we move on and begin to draw constructively from the EDSA experience.

Not that Enrile’s andGringo’s accounts would change the story much as we already know it. EDSA’s major storyline of the four days (as recounted in the Duet’s Chronology of a Revolution) being pretty set, the most the two can do is to flesh out or elaborate on the side plots that they were directly witness to or part of. Such as Gringo’s gang’s aborted coup that would have installed Enrile in Malacañang and, of course, Enrile’s private conversations with Marcos and classified communications with the Americans.

Of course I can’t wait to see if the daring duo will corroborate the Marcos line that EDSA was orchestrated by the Americans and that the Marcoses were kidnapped and flown to exile against their will. It’s a version of EDSA that saves face for the once-powerful Marcos regime – it’s not their fault daw that they fell from power; it’s the fault of the Americans.

Saling pusa

Facts bear me out that EDSA was a strictly Pinoy affair. The Americans were never in control of the four days’ events. While U.S. state officials knew about RAM’s coup plot, the Saturday defection and the gathering of people power caught them (and the Marcoses) napping. Hindi kasi nila akalaing mabubuking ang coup plot at mapa-praning sina Enrile’t Gringo. Hindi rin nila akalaing magagawa nina Enrile at Ramos na mag-join hands at mag-break away from the Marcos regime. At lalong hindi nila akalaing Pinoys had it in them to gather around a rebel military and turn back loyalist tanks with flowers and prayers.

Ayon kay Stanley Karnow (In Our Image 1989), on Day Two, Sunday, 4 a.m. Manila time, hindi pa nagkakasundo ang mga taga-U.S. State Department kung papaano iha-handle ang krisis sa Pilipinas: “Even at this late stage they were struggling to shape a firm Philippine policy—proof again that policies are often forged in the heat of crisis rather than in cool contemplation.”

The problem wasn’t convincing U.S. President Ronald Reagan that his friend Ferdinand’s time was up. The real problem was kung sinong ipapalit kay Marcos. Ayaw nila kay Cory because she was sympathetic to the leftists, the anti-bases groups in particular. The Americans needed time to groom someone like Marcos, someone younger and healthier, and reasonably popular, who would be willing to play puppet in return for power and pelf. Kaya lang, yun nga, na-overtake sila ng events – binulaga sila nina Ramos at Enrile, at ginulantang sila ng people power (and Fil-Am relations have never been the same again).

Oo nga, nakatulong din ang mga Kano but only in the end – nung tapos na ang boksing, panalo na ang people, president-in-waiting na si Cory –and only because Marcos asked for help.

What if

The Marcoses had another way out of the Palace: they could have escaped on their own, via the presidential helicopters. Ayon kay Nick Joaquin (Quartetof the Tiger Moon 1986), Lunes ng umaga pa lang (Day Three,10 a.m.) ay naka-standby na ang Palace Air Force, ready to fly the President and his family out of Malacañang. Pero inisnab sila ng pamilyang Marcos.

Can’t blame the Marcoses, though. Mahirap na nga naman. Baka rebels-in-disguise ang mga piloto. Papaano kung sa Crame o EDSA sila inilapag? Freak out!

Ah, but what a scene that would have been.