Today is the 39th year of EDSA PEOPLE POWER. How quickly people forget the significance of the event that happened thirty nine years ago. Social media is somehow responsible. It’s a working holiday today but some schools declared no classes defying the order. For the second year now the Marcos administration downplayed the commemoration and declared it a working holiday. They want to erase the significance of the event especially to the youth who were still in their mothers’ wombs when it happened.
Maybe for some people, they no longer see the relevance of the peaceful revolution that happened 39 years ago to oust a dictator.
I do think that some Filipinos never learned. They still embrace another dictator in the making. Those in power have lots of (people’s) money to burn, pay for trolls who disseminate fake news against their enemy. Some are diehard fanatics of this administration. As we say in Tagalog, they are “bulag, pipi at bingi”.
Wrote the following some thirty years ago.
“Yes, it was long ago but I am wondering if most of us Filipinos still remember the significance of what the Filipinos sacrificed for in the name of freedom, freedom from a twenty-year rule by a dictator. Martial law was declared on September 21, 1972 (Proclamation 1081) and we witnessed the unrest that followed, many people died in the hands of the dictator and so many political arrests was made. Long years of siphoning off the wealth of a country by greedy hands in the government, long years of wondering when it would end. What finally triggered the historic EDSA revolution was when Ninoy Aquino was killed in the tarmac of the airport back in 1983.
The youth of today would probably remember Ninoy as just a face on our five hundred peso bill or just a few lines maybe in their history textbooks. But for me, Ninoy represents a dream that never came true, a future for the Filipinos that never was. I have my own memories of Ninoy. I was in third year high school (or was it my senior year?) when Martial Law was declared. Back then, we would always see demonstrations by the Kabataang Makabayan. There was even a time when they entered the UST campus and paraded empty kabaongs – the turbulent times of the Martial Law years. We learned to live with it for more than a decade until the time Ninoy was shot at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983.
What followed were the struggles we have to go through just to oust a dictator. Rallies were held almost every day on main streets of the country. Ayala Avenue was always the hub of afternoon marches on the street and we were part of it. Yesterday, my former boss at Bank of the Philippine Islands posted so many photos he took of those days when we did our own share of our fight for democracy the BPI way – nostalgic replay of events that finally lead to a bloodless revolution thirty years ago. Yeay, those were the days – making yellow flowers out of crepe paper, making banners and banderitas , throwing confetti, braving to sit at the third floor window ledge of BPI so we could get close to a concert right in front of our building. We even experienced being tear gassed while we were in the middle of watching rallies from our floor.
Those in power thirty years ago are still in power now and we are even threatened by another Marcos win in the race. Have we not learned what EDSA stood for? The youth of today would not know of its significance unless their parents and relative who were part of it tell them in details what happened. It’s a good thing the organizers of the commemoration of the EDSA revolution put up an Experiential Museum recreating the experiences that awakened Filipinos to stand up and be counted. I hope they would find a place to make it a permanent exhibit for all of us to visit because it is only open until today and you have to reserve a slot for viewing.”
I hope the youth of today would somehow learn from the past. They are the future of the present generation.
“Marcos, Jr. is trying to cleanse their names from history but we Filipinos who are still alive now are witnesses to what happened before. My goodness, I think with those junkets abroad, he is trying to bring respect from the other countries and to help the Philippine economy through investments. Is anyone biting? He is the most travelled president during his eight months in office. And not only that, he brings with him his family and gargantuan members of his cabinet including close friends. Around the world in eight months. And they are using the people’s hard-earned tax money. Wala silang kahihiyan.”
I remember that my youngest was still just a year old when EDSA happened. For three straight days, we didn’t have to report to work.
It was a lesson where we could have learned something but the crooks in the government are still lording it over our land. And those from the lower bracket of life would rather accept a five-hundred peso bill then elect the corrupt and undesirables. We have plenty of the latter now.
I’d like to think that they never learned the lessons from the past.
Dreams And Escapes 