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IT took nearly 30 years for the tide to change, but change it did. On Sept. 15, 1989, the Supreme Court (SC) denied a petition that would have allowed former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his immediate family to return to the country. Marcos was dying and wanted to die at home.

Eight justices voted to deny, but seven saw no legal basis to prevent the dictator’s return. The seven were not convinced that allowing Marcos back home posed a clear and present danger to the nation. They said letting him back in would be the compassionate thing to do.

One of the more striking opinions was that of the Cebuano Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, one of the eight who voted to deny the petition. He said that while it wasn’t a legal ground, “the public pulse” ought to be viewed as one factor in the Court’s decision.

“The ouster of the Marcoses from the Philippines came about as an unexpected, but certainly welcomed, result of the unprecedented People Power revolution,” Chief Justice Fernan wrote. It was “a moral victory for the Filipino people, and the installation of the present administration, a realization of and obedience to the people’s will.”

Marcos died in exile less than two weeks after that decision. It took a little longer for his widow to return to the country, but return she did in November 1991. She ran for president the year after that but lost. She eventually won a congressional seat in Leyte in 1995. It took a mere six years for a Marcos to return to power.

Twenty-seven years after Marcos died, his son narrowly lost the vice presidency, a result that he continues to challenge.

A different Supreme Court, by a vote of 9-5, ruled in 2016 that