Another People Power?

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

On Tuesday I was interviewed by Bombo Bacolod with a question: Is there a possibility of another People Power like the one that toppled the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos? Offhand I replied that the current ideological, political and economic conditions are not enough to fire the people to take to the streets for an extraordinary method of removing an elected president.

Moreover, there are no personalities with enough integrity and leadership that can rally the people to risk their lives and limbs and their future to install another. There is also no person who has captured the imagination and following of the people who can replace the incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte. None among the present crop of political leaders has gained so great a popularity that can bring the people to streets.

Vital to a mass upheaval are the issues that are so grave that the only recourse is an extraconstitutional means of leadership change.

True, there are many complaints, here and abroad against the way President Duterte manages the country. His draconian methods of solving the scourge of illegal drugs have caused the killing of suspects and complaints of extra-judicial killings and violations of human rights. The imprisonment of Senator Leila de Lima had caused the United States Congress to pass a resolution against the President and former Senator Antonio Trillanes continues to cry out against harassment.

The move against the powerful ABS-CBN media conglomerate had raised issues of infringement of press freedom but the issues here is not the stifling of the right to free speech but the alleged violations of this company of its congressional franchise. The President also moved against the water companies but in this case the people who had been suffering from the inability of these companies to provide enough water 24/7 support the president. These are the masses that converged in EDSA in 1986, not for water but for political reasons.

The fact is that EDSA revolt was initially a military putsch initiated by Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and PNP Chief Fidel Ramos. If not for the call of Jaime Cardinal Sin, the Archbishop of Manila, for people to rally at EDSA to prevent the assault of the army against Camp Aguinaldo, there could have been a bloody confrontation.

Sure, President Duterte had been belligerent against the Catholic Church but there is no one in the Church today who has the voice of Cardinal Sin. At the time, the Church was already engaged even underground against martial law. The influence of Liberation Theology had been so powerful that many in the Church became activists against the abuses of government. President Duterte’s tirades had remained verbal and the Church has weathered more than that.

President Marcos has served only six years of his elected term but 14 years of dictatorial rule. That is a long time. Of course, the first four years were fine and even after martial law, his government did a lot of good, but the massive violations of human rights erased whatever good his government did that the communist rebellion grew exponentially.

The communists presented themselves as the alternative, citing even Liberation Theology as a proof of its validity. Indeed, many priests, seminarians and bright students were deluded and followed the rebellion line as the only alternative to remove Marcos. Marcos’ election in the snap election in 1985 was considered a cheat.

Although Marcos was a strong American ally, he made a mistake of using his “China card” when the US complained against his imposition of martial law in 1972 and violations of human rights. To spite the US, he recognized communist China at the time when the US was fighting a war in Vietnam. The US did not retaliate but hosted the political opposition in America that helped the underground democratic forces in the Philippines.

There is no such underground in the US today and because of free flow of information the propaganda of the “xeroxed” newspapers that worked well to generate hatred for the Marcos regime cannot work anymore.

There are other factors that led to the People Power in 1986, like the inbreeding of corruption in the government and the creation of a sham National Assembly.

The situation today has not deteriorated to the level of the Marcos regime that threw away its early gains. What happened are lessons to be learned.