ENDEAVOR
Sonny Coloma
On Feb. 25, 2014, the 28th anniversary of the triumph of People Power at EDSA, my esteemed friend Conrad de Quiros wrote a column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in which he raised the question, “Can an EDSA still happen today?”
De Quiros has since been sidelined by a debilitating stroke that he suffered in late 2015. The insights that he shared then provide present-day observers of Philippine politics an opportunity to reflect and understand the meaning of current events with barely 17 days left before election day.
He defined People Power as “a spontaneous burst of concentrated activity to accomplish an end.” He clarified that it “doesn’t have to be reactive, or opposing or protesting or stopping an iniquity; it can always be proactive, such as by pushing an idea or cause or advocacy.” Then he proceeded to cite “three luminous examples of that over the last few years,” which prompted him to point out that “it is happening even as we speak.”
The first example was the sudden and unexpected emergence of then freshman Senator Benigno S. Aquino III as the frontrunner in the 2010 presidential election. He announced his decision on the 40th day of mourning after the death of his mother, former President Corazon Aquino who came to power as an offshoot of EDSA People Power in 1986. De Quiros observed that “P-Noy wasn’t even a bleep in the presidential radar… Yet overnight, the landscape changed completely. P-Noy lurched forward and strode fairly comfortably to the finish line.”
When he passed away in June last year, some analysts floated the possibility that necropolitics would once more come into play; that the death of a prominent political figure would change the political landscape as it did in 2010. Former party-list Representative Jonathan de la Cruz observed in his Manila
Standard column that the late President’s eldest sister, Ballsy Aquino-Cruz “delivered a tempered and humanizing eulogy to his brother” that avoided stoking the flames of political partisanship.
But there was another aspect of De Quiros’ analysis of Noynoy Aquino’s sudden and phenomenal rise. He wrote further: “…in lieu of ousting somebody… it pushed for an idea, a cause, a new president. It was spontaneous, instinctive, popular, powerful, irresistible. It captured the imagination of the nation.
Overnight, it brought in droves of volunteers, who offered their services freely to make up for a campaign that lacked money, resources and organization.”
Is this phenomenon being witnessed anew today?
De Quiros also pointed out: “The second was the outpouring of generosity, malasakit, bayanihan, after “Yolanda.” That has always been there in the wake of calamities; for some reason those things bring out the best in us, but nowhere was it more in evidence than after Yolanda.”
Did we witness anew the spirit of bayanihan being manifested by the citizenry in any significant way?
Yes, Filipinos rallied to support the badly-hit communities that were ravaged most recently by super typhoon Odette in December 2021 and typhoons Rolly and Ulysses in 2020 during the pandemic. But more significant and telling was the spontaneous, unexpected emergence of community pantries that was sparked by the example of Ana Patricia Non. She set up the first community pantry on Maginhawa street in Quezon City on April 14, 2021.
Three weeks later, on May 5, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) reported that there were already 6,715 community pantries nationwide. According to Secretary Eduardo Año, these were found in several regions: Calabarzon, Mimaropa provinces, Central Luzon, Metro Manila, Ilocos, Western Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Bicol, Davao region, Zamboanga peninsula, Northern Mindanao, Soccsksargen, and Caraga.
In just 21 days, 11 out of the country’s 17 regions had witnessed this remarkable phenomenon. Even in the midst of a crippling pandemic, Filipinos rallied to help each other in a moving demonstration of bayanihan and malasakit Isn’t this a clear manifestation of People Power in action?
The third case in point, wrote De Quiros was: “… the 'Million People March' held appropriately enough on National Heroes Day last year (2013), echoing a key People Power proposition that each one could be a hero, the people themselves could be heroes. They did not need a leader, they could be their own leaders. They did not need a messiah, they could be their own saviors. The march of course arose in protest over pork (barrel scam), and though it was never quite duplicated on the same scale afterward, it produced a template that offered enormous possibilities in the future.”
In like manner, since early March, we have witnessed mammoth political rallies attended by tens of thousands of people who are manifesting their civic spirit by self-organizing, sharing food, marshaling their own ranks and even cleaning up the venues of their mass gathering.
De Quiros pointed out that social media made all of the foregoing examples of latter-day People Power possible. His insight: “…the physical space of EDSA has given way to cyberspace as the new site of People Power.” Yet, there is a counterpoint: carefully crafted mini-doses of disinformation and historical revisionism have also been propagated by well-funded micro-influencers to shape the electorate’s choice.
After the results have been tabulated and the winners have been proclaimed, would history record the May 2022 elections as People Power redux?