It is time to finish the EDSA Revolution
The so-called People Power Revolution or the EDSA Revolt is now 34 years old, and as a senior citizen already, it’s easy for me to talk about the times when Tita Cory was in Cebu to address the Rally in Fuente Osmeña because being a member of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) of then Senator Salvador “Doy” Laurel, (it is the only political party that I ever joined) we were up on stage with the top members of the opposition to the Marcos dictatorship.
The presence of Tita Cory in Cebu (later she was housed in the Carmelite Convent in Mabolo) is proof that she wasn’t in the EDSA Revolution in the early days of this political upheaval. The real story of the EDSA Revolution is simply because the Marcos political family refused to step down from political power and instead declared martial law in September 21, 1972. Filipinos have learned to love democracy and felt that Marcos declared Martial Law not to quell the armed communist insurgency, but to stay in political power.
Just to doublecheck my sources, I looked in Wikipedia. Allow me to reprint something that I never wrote before. Wikipedia wrote, “It is also referred to as the Yellow Revolution due to the presence of yellow ribbons during demonstrations following the assassination of Filipino Senator Benigno “Ninoy Aquino, Jr. In August 1983. It was widely seen as a victory of the people against two decades of presidential rule by President Marcos, and made news headlines as "the revolution that surprised the world".” This so-called Yellow Revolution began the Yellow Cult of the Aquino political family and led to the election of the son of Tita Cory, Pres. PNoy Aquino III. The rest is history.
I will never forget that during his six-year term, PNoy never wore the Philippine flag on his chest, but yellow ribbons, which don’t represent any official function in the Philippine government. Today, 34 years after the EDSA Revolution, there are only a few people in EDSA, most of whom are followers of theYellow Cult of the Aquino Family. So what really happened after we removed the Marcos dictatorship?
Tita Cory, who admitted that she knew nothing about how to run the government, refused to become titular president of our country which was then under a parliamentary system and declared the use of a freedom constitution where she ruled just like the dictator we removed. For instance, she freed Communist Party of the Philippines Chairman Jose Maria Sison, who was facing criminal cases in court, without any explanation or even a deal. This is why until today we still have the New People’s Army killing innocent people and soldiers.
Then the most controversial thing that Tita Cory did was exempt her family’s Hacienda Luisita from CARP; rather, it became a program that implemented a stock distribution option in which the farmers would receive corporate stocks as an alternative to land distribution. In Hacienda Luisita, the farmers’share of 4,916 hectares, valued at P197 million, only consisted 33% of total shares. The Cojuangcos’ shares, worth P394 million, consisted 67%. Inevitably, under the system, many farmers lost their land.
During the time of Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Renato Corona unanimously declared as final and executory a decision that ruled that Hacienda Luisita be distributed among some 6,000 farmer-beneficiaries. This en banc ruling also ordered the Department of Agrarian Reform and the Land Bank of the Philippines to determine the just compensation for the original owners, the Cojuangco Family.
The court also voted 8-6 to compensate the landowners based on Nov. 21, 1989 valuation instead of 2006 rates. The 2006 rates would have meant a P5-billion payment to the Cojuangcos, while the 1989 valuation would amount to around P200 million. This in a nutshell is what happened to the EDSA Revolution and why many people believed that it failed Filipinos. Then when PNoy Aquino became president he had Chief Justice Corona removed from the Supreme Court in a very clear act of revenge that the Filipino people would never forget!
Today, rather than completing the EDSA Revolution to its ultimate goal of having a political party that helps the people, we have become worse, and Congress even rejected the anti-dynasty proposal. There is still time to finish the EDSA Revolution under President Duterte, but will he do it?