History marks Feb. 25, 1986 as the culmination of the so-called 1986 Edsa “people power” uprising. This event triggered the end of the strongman administration of then-President Ferdinand Marcos, and the installation of President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino, the widow of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., the charismatic political opposition leader assassinated in 1983 at the airport which now bears his name.
The uprising took place in the wake of a mutiny staged by then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and General Fidel Ramos, then the deputy chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and a relative of President Marcos. After Marcos learned of the mutiny and demanded their surrender, Enrile and Ramos prepared for a last stand at their respective offices at Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Quezon City.
Fortunately for Enrile and Ramos, Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin and Ninoy sibling Agapito Aquino heard about their plight and called on Filipinos all over the metropolis, through Radio Veritas, to shield both camps from any reprisals from soldiers loyal to President Marcos. In the end, the soldiers dispatched to fight the mutineers joined the rebellion.
President Marcos refused to authorize any attack against the civilians surrounding both camps. Rather than instigate what could have been a bloody civil war, Marcos left Malacañang together with his family. American consular officials arranged for his departure for Hawaii.
The Marcos departure was quickly praised by anti-Marcos groups as a peaceful, bloodless revolution which deposed a despot, with the credit going to the Filipino people in general, and to Cory, Enrile, Ramos, and Sin in particular. It was peaceful and bloodless, all right, but not only because the crowds around the camps were uninjured. Pro-Cory propagandists conveniently failed to mention that it was peaceful and bloodless because Marcos refused to authorize the use of violence on the people who surrounded the mutineers.
A year or so later, a shopping mall was erected near the vicinity of the uprising, and a Roman Catholic church was constructed at the corner of the site. This came to be called the Edsa Shrine.
During the next few years following the uprising, a program was held every Feb. 25 at the Shrine, with President Cory Aquino in attendance. The theme of each program was always the same —the bloodless uprising that ended the Marcos dictatorship.
The annual event at the Shrine also became a forum where Aquino blasted her political enemies and critics. On one occasion, Aquino took a swipe at her vice president, Salvador “Doy” Laurel. Aquino forgot it was Laurel who gave way to her in December 1985 to form a united opposition ticket against the Marcos administration candidates in the February 1986 elections.
As the years passed, the crowds at the annual event dwindled, and the uprising was quietly remembered each year with a small, isolated celebration.
Although the festivities at the Shrine eventually became infrequent, each anniversary of the Edsa uprising continued to be the focus of attention in feature articles published in newspapers and magazines, and in hour-long local and foreign television documentaries broadcast on cable TV channels. These documentaries were intense in their anti-Marcos sentiments, and they usually included just a few remarks from Marcos family members—a possible attempt to make the documentary appear fair and objective.
Inevitably, the TV documentaries added one more accusation against President Marcos—that he was responsible for the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. From the way the documentaries were presented, however, the accusation against Marcos is largely conjectural, owing to the absence of any convincing evidence of the direct involvement of Marcos in the assassination, and in view of the refusal of some prominent persons allied with Aquino to believe that Marcos ordered Ninoy’s elimination. The documentaries usually end with a query about who really was behind the assassination of Ninoy.
The attacks against President Marcos and his family were not confined to the anniversaries of the February uprising. Any occasion that can be associated with Marcos or either of the Aquino spouses, like the anniversary of the proclamation of martial law in the Philippines, and the birth and death anniversaries of Marcos, Ninoy, or Cory, became the right time for some relentless Marcos-bashing.
Year after year, the members of the Marcos family kept silent, and refused to take any retaliatory measures against their detractors. They continued to keep silent even when they were back in power in the years following the 1986 Edsa uprising.
Indeed, despite all the bad stories peddled against the Marcoses in the decades after the 1986 Edsa uprising, members of the Marcos family got elected to office in Ilocos Norte and in Leyte, known bailiwicks of the late strongman. His only son and namesake, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. enjoys the trust and confidence of the Filipino voters as seen in his recent election to the Senate. Bongbong is running for vice president in May 2016, and the polls reveal that he has a very strong chance of winning.
As expected, the 30th anniversary of the Edsa uprising last Thursday provided the moribund administration of President Benigno Aquino III and his political allies another occasion to denounce President Marcos and his family. The usual anti-Marcos propaganda were all over the newspapers, and on cable TV as well.
Groups composed of individuals who claim to be torture victims during the martial law years have suddenly appeared in the news, and they are all opposed to Bongbong’s bid to become vice president.
One alleged torture victim could not even get his story right. In an interview published last Thursday in another newspaper, the alleged victim blamed President Marcos for allowing a famous labor leader to be tortured to death in November 1986. Good grief! How can Marcos be blamed for that when he was already in Hawaii earlier in February 1986?
TO BE CONTINUED ON TUESDAY
