THROUGH UNTRUE
Fr. Rolando V. dela Rosa, O.P.
Judging from the way the People Power Revolution was celebrated last Feb. 25, it seems that the word EDSA has become a verbal overkill. The quantity of usage has outstripped the quality of discourse. EDSA seems to have lost its power and magic. Many people associate it with traffic and potholes on the roads.
EDSA was once synonymous with the uniquely Filipino success story which was hailed all over the world. It was a victory achieved in an absurdly unfamiliar way, and so distinctly Filipino that foreign observers found no word to describe it. They could not believe that a people, known for their multiple-digit foreign debts, exported domestic helpers, and rabid political factionalism, could tame the savage instincts of a crowd and produce a bloodless revolution. Many countries tried to duplicate EDSA, but they failed miserably.
For 36 years, we remember, celebrate, and commemorate it, hoping to save the event from being unfairly reduced to a mere occurrence. The EDSA narrative seemed destined to become one of our national myths that can finally unite us.
Unfortunately, it did not. In fact, it mutated into the mistaken belief that People Power is a normal expression of Philippine democracy. If people disagree with the government, they resort to mass action and call it EDSA. For many years, EDSA has also become a gauge for determining which political movement or group has moral basis, or which party has automatic access to the voters' hearts. Worse, EDSA has become a passport to power and prestige.
To see EDSA as Ninoy Aquino's legacy is perhaps the best way to rekindle the EDSA spirit that once inflamed our patriotism. After all, his death channeled fragmented initiatives and protests into a unified clamor for reform. It was his single-minded non-violent stance that gave the People Power Revolution its unique quality: a peaceful uprising where the weak overcame the strong; where prayers and goodwill overturned a rising wave of violence and destruction.
Before Ninoy’s death, we were focused on the outside for deliverance. He turned our attention back to ourselves to rediscover our innate power and strength. He reminded us that political reform could not be achieved without sacrifice; that lasting social change happens, not outside-in but inside-out, that our salvation depends not on foreign dole-outs or interventions, but on our individual resolve, collective action, and abiding faith in God and in ourselves.
Marching together at EDSA, people armed only with the weapons of goodness—a smile, a prayer, a flower, a rosary, a religious icon, a placard saying, “We are all Filipinos”—bravely confronted a phalanx of soldiers with machine guns and a number of armored tanks.
Ninoy reminded us that just as one flickering candle is sufficient to dispel the blackness of the night, so the smallest deeds of goodness can overcome even the most terrifying power of evil. During those fateful days in February 1986, Filipinos rediscovered the strength of their faith, their willingness to sacrifice, their yearning for the basic virtues of integrity and honesty, their heroic resolve to change, their courage to say “Enough is enough!”
Ninoy’s legacy is so precious that we should feel enhanced just by remembering it. The collective memory of the youth will be unjustly impoverished if we allow the EDSA event and Ninoy’s sacrifice to decay into an empty slogan or a political propaganda. We must save it from becoming a living testimony to our ningas cogon mentality, our lack of historical consciousness, our apathy, and neglect.