RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
One ought have faith in history. One ought have faith in history just to be at peace in a world where fake news presents itself as truth. And truth is pilloried all the time for being fake news. People can be made to believe in lies. That is not new. It has been the norm since ancient times.
But only reason can save humans and bring real progress. Reason will always be important. The truth will be told in the end because reason cannot exist without it. The purveyors of fake news will be unmasked and quickly forgotten. And then truth and reason will search for its third friend, which is freedom. People will always want to be free. Freedom is not rooted in morality. Good people, no less than the bad, will always search for it. Freedom is not just in the primordial design of humans. It is a fact for all biological organisms.
These are lessons I learned and remember from EDSA. I remember close to two decades of martial law, the curtailment of truth, the reign of greed over reason, and a person could be free only at great risk to herself or himself. It was not an easy world. Though it was exciting.
The suffering was obvious. There was much poverty everywhere and mostly in the slums; and we, a few young people my age, schoolmates, wondered what could be done. How could we help? And since I was in the prime of youth, I did exactly what people in the prime of youth do. I read up on it.
I tried to define myself according to the self image of one who desired one day to say: I went through those times and did my part no matter how small and insignificant. The books I read told me to have faith in the truth of history and reason; that with those truths, I could wrest freedom away from those who would take it away. I did not know who, where, and how many we were who thought like this.
I only knew there were a few of us in my school. We were the best and brightest, (perhaps the better looking also) easily to become friends. Besides “us” I did not know how many else we were. For we kept ourselves hidden away so our enemies could not easily get to us. When Ninoy Aquino said, “Hindi ka nag-iisa,” we knew immediately we were more than enough. After that, the mass of people who attended Ninoy’s funeral proved it.
The time of Marcos was over. The only thing surprising was that our people pulled EDSA off without losing lives. But even if it came to a shooting war, Marcos’ time would have been done anyway. By going away peacefully, they were really saving themselves more than anybody else.
When EDSA came bloodlessly, the whole world found it unbelievable. It had repercussions worldwide and quite by design as by coincidence was repeated in many other bloodless revolutions in the world: in Poland, the Soviet Union, and others.
It is true that we could have played the years after that differently. We could have and should have kept on the fight to set our people free especially from grinding poverty. We could have done more. But the likelihood of violence would have increased. EDSA brought us to a period of relative peace but our enemies were still there. They waited for their time to return to power. We should have seen it.
I suppose, some of us did. But what more could be done? History unveils itself, inexorably, inevitably, and always — slowly. So that every generation will have its own battles to fight. But I remember, we fought ours well. We, in our own small way, helped bring our history forward. I do not know if we did all we could. Perhaps we did. Perhaps there is still also a bit of fight left inside us.
For the act of revolution and real change never stops. The majority of our people still suffer from the lack of things that the few have too much of and will not share. The few will wrest freedom away from the many so they will have more of it than anyone else. Such as the freedom to lie to their own people, to history, with seeming impunity, such as those who call EDSA fake news. But as Marcos has shown, the dark periods of history can only be transitory. Those driven by greed for riches and power are driven inevitably to their own destruction.
They will find their day of judgement. Certain things about us never change. They are as immutable as the fact of stars: History, Reason, Truth, Freedom, and the memory of EDSA.