Remembering EDSA 1986 and Why We’ve Lost that Loving Feeling

By Joey Salgado

I was 24 when the 1986 EDSA Revolution happened.

Despite being jaded and skeptical by training and disposition, I still had a bit of youthful idealism and believed, like most witnesses or participants, that a revolution - generally bloodless - could upend the structures of injustice, and that we could forego self-interests and be united if we just hold hands and sing “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo.” Boy, were we wrong.

We expected too much but worked too little to make the promise a reality. We oversold the significance of the event to ourselves, and were terribly frustrated when the supposedly democratic regimes that followed Marcos miserably underdelivered.

EDSA would swallow its children, only to regurgitate some of them. Yes, EDSA led to a restoration of democracy, of our rights and liberties, but it also restored the old political elite and spawned new ones. And we allowed it, or tolerated it as part of the new democratic space.

Eventually, unity would give way to factions and the cause of the nation would yield to political ambitions and business interests, at times both of them reaching a confluence. The people, in whose name the Revolution was mounted, became passive observers, bystanders to the high-stakes power play at the top reaches of government. If the years after EDSA were a long dinner party, the people would be in the servant’s quarters, scraping for crumbs. It was business as usual for the political elite.

The widespread disenchantment has its roots in the failure of each succeeding administration to improve the lives of the people, to lift them from the curse of hunger, poverty and destitution. We had our rights, but most had no rice or bread.

We exercised our freedoms to the fullest, but ordinary Filipinos did not enjoy the freedom from poverty and want. Those who dared raise their voices in protest were treated in the same heavy-handed manner employed by the ousted dictatorship.

This would prove to be putty in the hands of forces and personalities who cloaked themselves in the color and rhetoric of EDSA, but worked to undermine its legitimacy, values and legacy.

Yellow was once the color of courage. The “L” hand sign was the symbol of defiance. They should have belonged to the people as revered icons, but they were transformed into signifiers of elitist politics. Today, these icons of Revolution are regarded as symbols of elitist indifference.

It is no wonder that every election, the people would look for someone who could save them miraculously from the oppression of poverty in the same manner that EDSA succeeded as a result of divine intervention rather than an exercise in collective will. The intense infighting among the political elites since 1986 gave way to a frustration with politics as usual and paved the way for the election of perceived outsiders, despots in disguise who use the very institutions of democracy to undermine it.

We have also failed to ingrain among the youth a deeper respect and understanding of the sacrifices made, how high the stakes were during those days at the barricades. The freedoms they enjoy and take so casually today were once as precious as air, and we had to fight in order to breathe it. The highly-funded effort to revise history and rehabilitate the image of the dictator would not have gained considerable traction had it not been for this egregious oversight.

Perhaps its not too late to remind ourselves and future generations that the rewards of EDSA will not come in an instant, that it will take consistent and concerted nurturing, and demand from us a lifetime of dedicated work and vigilance.

While there are those who see EDSA as betrayal, a failure, or opportunity lost, I would rather see it as work in progress. We may run into bumps and obstacles, we may get lost and distracted, but what is important is we find our way back home. We must always look to our North Star.

This is an edited version of an article first published in Rappler on the 35th anniversary of the 1986 EDSA Revolution