‘No change,’ 33 years after EDSA People Power Revolution — analysts
Credit to Author: CATHERINE A. MODESTO| Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2019 04:06:28 +0000
AS the country commemorates the 33rd EDSA People Power Revolution, which ended the 20-year reign of the late president Ferdinand Marcos, a panel of analysts said the bloodless uprising did not bring about change.
In a panel discussion aired on TMT TV on Monday, Clarita Carlos, a political science professor of the University of the Philippines said, “There was no change after 33 years. We should not call it a revolution because there was just a circulation of elites. Pinalitan mo si (You just changed) Marcos et al, ng (of) Aquino, Roxas etc.)
Carlos said that the peaceful revolt should just be called a “people power event,” because for an occasion to be called a revolution, there must be “structural change.”
The professor said that until now, the country’s political system was “still broken.”
“First we are still under the presidential system where every 2000 days you change the face of the president; and every 1000 days you change the face of Congress,” said Carlos.
She said that she had high hopes of change when she joined the revolt against Marcos in 1986, but nothing significant happened.
Former ambassador to Poland Alejandro del Rosario echoed Carlos, but said that the Philippines’ people power “inspired” other countries, mostly in Eastern Europe like Ukraine and Romania, which overthrew its dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, to hold their own “velvet revolutions.”
As for Fr. Larry Faraon, people power was a “moment in [Philippine] history” that the country could immortalize and learn from.
Led by a band of rebel troops under the leadership of then Marcos Defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Philippine Constabulary chief Fidel V. Ramos, over a million people massed and prayed in Edsa for four days in February 1986 to demand the ouster of Marcos who was accused of cheating his opponent, Corazon Aquino, widow of senator Benigno Aquino Jr., in the snap presidential elections.
With the support of the Catholic Church under his late Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin and a clandestine group of media men and women who provided news updates, the Edsa revolt toppled the Marcos regime and became an example worldwide of peaceful change.
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