Legacies of EDSA People Power Revolution 1

I wasn’t there at EDSA. But it doesn’t mean I like the declaration of the state of emergency that takes away our basic freedoms. But what I want to say is that these events are all part of the unintended legacies of the EDSA 1. After Marcos fled, we destroyed the long-established institutions for political socialization and mobilization, the party system, by disparagingly calling them “traditional politics” or trapo (dirty rag). Yet, those naïve reformers of the post-Marcos era never gave us the idea what’s non-traditional politics is all about. So we destroyed, we demeaned political personalities including those reasonable personalities like Nene Pimentel, Edgardo Angara, Franklin Drilon, nay even Jovito Salonga.

Every politician these days are “trapo” so we simply ran out of alternatives. In the last few years, The Gloria had all those scandals, the worst of them being the Hello Garci, yet the opposition couldn’t drive her out of Malacañang through "constitutional" means. “There is no viable alternative!,” they always say. And indeed there are none, because we are looking for a “non-traditional politician” to lead us. Joseph Estrada, of course, is a “non-traditional politician” but he is in jail. Many of us are not comfortable with him either. So was the late Fernando Poe Jr—but he is now dead. That’s the reason why every time there is political crisis in this country, we always have coup or rumors of it.

We should not wonder because, the Cory Constitution, another naïve EDSA legacy, gave soldiers the reason to intervene politically. After all, the Constitution says soldiers are "the protectors of the Filipino people.” So every time there’s political impasse, some of our “idealistic” soldiers are always aching to save the Filipino people from themselves. The real solution should really have been to strengthen the party system and make them more inclusive a la the party system in America, in tandem with economic redistributive and deregulation measures.