Time to leave Edsa rites to the people
AS I noted in a previous column, the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte is on the opposite side of the progressive. That is why I am not surprised by its announcement to have a simple celebration for the 31st anniversary of the Edsa people power uprising on Feb. 25. It would be too much to ask for this government to be agog about an act that it obviously wants to forget.
Earlier, former president Fidel V. Ramos, one of the major figures in the uprising that toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, claimed that Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea told him the “simple” celebration will be held inside Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City. Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella however said another ritual would be held where the President is expected to attend.
Malacañang has announced the theme for this year’s Edsa uprising commemoration: “A Day of Reflection: Celebrating People Power for Nation Building.” Abella put government’s intention this way: “The emphasis has shifted. It is no longer a celebration of the past. It is now a reflection on what can happen in the future. It is a moving on from those things.”
Interestingly, the idea of “moving on” is actually in keeping with the attempt by the family of the late dictator to revise the narrative on the abuses of the Marcos dictatorship. The effort of the Marcoses in the past years has been to spread the lie that the dictatorship ushered in the golden years in the country’s governance and that the late dictator was God’s gift to the Filipino people.
The commemorations of the Edsa uprising before the current administration was put in place always served to counter this revisionism. The purpose is not to “move on” but to remind Filipinos of those dark years in our history so that what happened then would not be repeated now or in the future. The call is to not forget and the slogan is, “Never again!”
A “simple” Edsa celebration that essentially is only a bit louder than a whimper is therefore a step towards forgetting and fits snugly with the Marcoses’revisionist narrative. This is bad considering how the dictator’s namesake, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. almost won as vice president in the 2016 elections.
By the way, only the Duterte government and not any other administration allowed the burial of the body of the late dictator— the main target
of the Edsa uprising--at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. That act, done last year, showed where this government stands in relation to Marcos’s ouster in 1986. It glossed over the abuses and plunder that he committed during his two decade-rule.
It could even be in keeping with the “moving on” mantra of the Duterte administration that Bongbong would be appointed as secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Governments (DILG) when the one-year ban on appointments of losers in the 2016 polls to government posts is l i ft ed.
But instead of complaining, those who have embraced the causes of the 1986 Edsa people power uprising should use this as an opportunity to rekindle the “people power” spirit. It may be time to give back the commemoration to those who primarily waged the struggle: the people.