Inequality is EDSA’s legacy

COME February 25, organizers hope that like the same day in 1986, several hundreds of thousands will converge on EDSA to supposedly commemorate a past “revolution” and in the same breath lament the “darkness” that they say has fallen on the country, and accusing those who do not share their perspectives.

Of course, the spotlight will be on them, and whether the narratives they profess are still upheld by majority of Filipinos- (that EDSA 86 was good for them) whether its promises and legacy are still what encapsulate their individual and collective hopes.

What February 25 signals is 31 years in the aftermath of an upheaval that many argue was not a revolution.

Because the basic tenet of a revolution is change in the way society works and replicates itself, and how it moves on after the event. In our case, EDSA was meant to be a liberation from the crony capitalism, poverty and economic inequality that characterized a failing Philippine State under Marcos, toward a better life for all Filipinos.

How much really has changed? Poverty remains persistent despite rates falling since 1986. While we are now at 25%, Malaysia and Indonesia have succeeded in reducing poverty to 1.7 and 11% respectively. (ASEAN) Why havent we reduced the number of poor as well as they did?

While poverty numbers may look better, economic inequality is visibly apparent, pushing the rural folk to the margins, the urban poor to squalor, and the skilled to work abroad.

Moreover, this inequality is clear across regions: Most growth has been concentrated in the Greater Manila area, that small space between the provinces of Quezon and Tarlac, where today 60% of our Gross Domestic Product is generated. It was hoped that after 1986, this wealth and opportunity would have been spread wider.

The truth is, nowhere else is inequality more profound than in Mindanao, where the poorest Filipinos live, where in one region alone, 3 out of 4 people are hungry. Unchanged since 1986.

That said, the post EDSA goverments have only reinforced the inequality they hoped to destroy.

Worse, the economic sectors that could have helped us reduce poverty have likewise fallen:job generating and food growing industries like manufacturing and agriculture have gone to the dogs while our ASEAN neighbors have done a much better job strengthening their food production.

In sum, inequality is EDSA’s greatest and deepest legacy. Not because it failed in its promise to reduce it, but because in its aftermath, governments have only replicated it.

Inequality can only be solved with measures to ensure job generating “inclusive growth,” a mantra the PNoy government proclaimed, but did little to achieve.

The post-EDSA regimes, particulalry the PNoy government failed to put in place a tax system that would have ensured better wealth transfers and opportunties to strengthen the middle class.

It also failed to spend properly, witholding expenditure on important public goods like infrastructure. Little wonder therefore, that practically all industrial development achieved in the last 30 years surrounds the Greater Manila area. Poor infrastructure hobbled efforts to disperse the opportunities.

Why does the PNoy government deserve all these criticisms?

Because he would have been the fulfillment of the post-EDSA political project that sadly, performed below expectations.

Come to think of it,if the EDSA revolution were a widespread success, then Mar Roxas would have won the presidency. The 2016 elections that took place right after the event’s 30th anniversary would have been an opportunity for victory. The results as we all know, were a repudiation of this event and the politicians who represented it.

Even the suposedly popular Aquino, whose last ditch effort to unite his anointed Roxas and Grace Poe against Rodrigo Duterte, found his own unification effort rejected.

At the end of his presidency and after 30 years since his mother took power, government is still inutile to control the greed of a few and enable what is needed to meet the need of the many. Removing inequality requires political will, a resource he really did not have.

EDSA’s real promise is power for all Filipinos from the indigenous communities in Mindanao’s remotest hinterlands, to the streets of Katipunan avenue and EDSA where the antigovernment rallyists on February 25 will converge. This power enables them to do what they need to make their lives better.

This promise has sadly eluded the Filipino as a whole, reserved for the few who reserve a nostalgia for the 1986 event- only they seem fulfilled by it.

After 30 years, our politics remained unstable and our culture pretty much reflected the individual and collective turmoils that envelope society-exactly the outcomes bred by economic inequality.

In sum, only when inequality in this country is crushed can the EDSA event’s promise be fulfilled. For now, its narrative, having been rejected by majority, is shared by a dwindling audience.