EDSA’s lesson
24 February, 38 years ago today — The third day, which saw Juan Ponce Enrile, Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.’s defense minister for 16 years and his martial law administrator from 1972 to 1981, and then Armed Forces of the Philippines Vice Chief of Staff, Fidel V. Ramos, holed up inside Camp Crame, was marked by units of the AFP switching allegiance, abandoning Marcos to join the rebel (JPE/FVR/Reform the Armed Forces Movement or RAM) forces.
Amid reports that Marcos was ordering military units to stage a decisive attack against rebel-held Crame, more people streamed onto EDSA, particularly the stretch from Ortigas Avenue to Crame, occupying both sides of the highway.
But even as rebel soldiers with JPE, FVR and RAM, which was under the leadership of then Army Colonel and Enrile’s chief of security Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, prayed and prepared for the worst, orders by the staunchest of Marcos loyalists, AFP Chief of Staff Fabian Ver and then Army Commander Maj. Gen. Josephus Ramas, for an all-out attack attack on EDSA and Crame went unheeded.
The Philippine Air Force’s entire 15th Strike Wing under Col. Antonio Sotelo defected, and so did 50 naval officers along with Philippine Navy Defense Force chief, Commodore Tagumpay Jardiniano, on board a gunboat which dropped anchor in the Pasig River, the boat’s guns trained on the Palace.
Meanwhile, at around 4 in the afternoon, Ninoy Aquino’s widow, Cory, who had been going around the country calling for a nationwide boycott of companies allied with Marcos, went up a makeshift stage at the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency building on the corner of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue to address the sea of humanity gathered there which gave her thunderous applause while chanting, “Cory! Cory!”
More defections took place, including the entire 5th Fighter Wing at Basa Air Base in Pampanga; Gen. Augusto Paraiso of the AFP Planning Unit; Col. Godofredo Rios of V. Luna Hospital, and Philippine Airlines Chairman Roman Cruz Jr. (brother of Marcos’ Ambassador to the Court of St. James’, JV Cruz), among many others.
US President Ronald Reagan watched all this from the White House. He had initially refused to ask Marcos to step down, offering him, instead, asylum.
Later in the day, however, as he saw how developments were unfolding rapidly on EDSA, Reagan agreed to call for Marcos’ resignation, with the entire US government endorsing Cory Aquino’s provisional government.
Calling Marcos by phone from Washington D.C. on behalf of the US President, Sen. Paul Dominique Laxalt (R-Nevada), one of Reagan’s closest friends, spoke with Marcos who asked him, ”Senator, what do you think? Should I step down?”
Laxalt gave it to Marcos straight: “I think you should cut, and cut cleanly. I think the time has come.”
Knowing that Laxalt spoke for Reagan, a dispirited Marcos said, “I am so very, very disappointed.”
Marcos Sr.’s game, at that point, was over. Within 24 hours he and his family, along with servants, close aides, and a few cronies would be airlifted out of the country from Clark Air Base to Hawaii.
It does not really matter that the Marcoses were allowed to come back from exile in 1992 and, two decades later they took back Malacañang in spectacular fashion through Marcos’s namesake and junior’s victory in the presidential elections of 2022.
A friend, who was among the first to respond to the late Jaime Cardinal Sin’s exhortation for people to go to EDSA and provide a protective buffer between Enrile and Ramos in Crame and Marcos’s military forces, maintains that he saw EDSA “as a chance, not so much to change an autocratic regime, it was more than just a regime change. I saw it as an opportunity for us to change ourselves, to reform the system.”
Have we? Well, he said, in terms of democracy, we did see the restoration of freedoms that we had lost when the country was put under martial rule.
And, ultimately, what lessons are there that could be learned from EDSA?
“Simple,” he said. “Don’t be greedy. Make the people you were sworn to serve happy. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that.”
“The Philippine Air Force’s entire 15th Strike Wing under Col. Antonio Sotelo defected, and so did 50 naval officers along with Philippine Navy Defense Force chief, Commodore Tagumpay Jardiniano, on board a gunboat which dropped anchor in the Pasig River, the boat’s guns trained on the Palace.
“US President Ronald Reagan watched all this from the White House. He had initially refused to ask Marcos to step down, offering him, instead, asylum.