Once again we witnessed the spectacle of celebrations that remember the 1986 People Power Revolution last Tuesday right here in Cebu. Those among us who were privileged to be student activists in the years that eventually led to the February 25 popular uprising, are now aged and cynical, many of us asking what went wrong.
It is without doubt laudable that Pres. Benigno Aquino III chose Cebu to celebrate the 28th anniversary of that fateful day if only to highlight the uprising also happened outside of Manila in the years prior and up to the time Pres. Ferdinand Marcos left Malacañang and his mother, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, was quickly sworn in as president. But beyond this belated correction in history is the fact that the ideals which we fought for were also derailed by the very people who took power after Marcos left.
Four things immediately stand out today that tell you why the present generation barely cares about EDSA and its significance to their lives. The first of these is the obvious return of an oligarchic class—incidentally, one of the very reasons that Marcos imposed dictatorial rule in 1972 and up to 1986—best evidenced by the dilemma of Aquino’s advisers in explaining why the tremendous growth in the economy, far surpassing the best estimates, has not trickled down to the poor.
The answer is simple: the very wealthy are getting all the opportunities to make more wealth than ever before while the poor are shut out of the whole game. President Fidel Ramos, himself a popular hero of Edsa, had better luck in attempting to level the economic playing field than the administrations that followed him. More and more Filipinos are going abroad because there are far better opportunities to earn money than here.
This country is like China during the latter years of the failing Qing Dynasty, when wholesale importation of human labor became a single source of income for that giant of a country.
A second reason is the concentration of national wealth right at the National Capital Region, where every year the government pours out billions of pesos in new infrastructure without realizing that it is entering a vicious, not a virtuous cycle, in doing so.
More and better infrastructure at the national capital is a sure magnet for people to flock there and leave the countryside. This has resulted in the patent failure of agricultural development such that this country which hosts the International Rice Research Institute, one of three world-class international food research centers, imports rice from Vietnam, Thailand and even our current bully, China.
The more people flock to Metro Manila the more infrastructure is required, forcing government and the eager private sector to open up new spaces for development and build more roads and expressways thereby resulting in more and more people migrating there for work, ending up in informal settlements with no electricity and where evening entertainment consists of making more babies that only add to the complication and morass that Manila is in.
A third reason is without doubt the corruption that was “democratized” as it were following the re-democratization brought about by Edsa. Whereas 14 years of dictatorship centralized corruption in the hands of a few, Edsa created local centers of power fostered by the Asian penchant of family first above nation. Over the last 28 years therefore we have seen many political families lording over the reins of local government, some of them fortunately enlightened enough to deliver basic services and more. But as the Ampatuan clan had shown in Maguindanao, the ugly face of feudal rule under the guise of democracy is alive and well.
Even Marcos himself would have been at home in this whole scenario. If he were to be resurrected, he would probably be pleasantly surprised that those who followed him just replaced his cronies with their own. It is still a big boys’ club after all.
The last reason I see is related to the previous one: the fatal failure to follow the requisites of democratic rule handed down to us, incidentally, by our colonial master, the United States of America. Instead of a two-party system, President Cory Aquino allowed a multitude of parties to either coalesce or contend with each other during elections. Party principles, the very bedrock on which democratic debate and national visioning are anchored, are thus relegated to the back-burner as political families wheel and deal when elections approach in order to survive into the next term. Some, like rats on a sinking ship, scurry about and hastily abandon those they stood with and lauded to high heavens in order to survive. A country run by personalities and along family interests is doomed to fail.
Without principles and scruples, our politicians build their careers on expanding personal alliances and currying favors.
The removal of pork barrel funds or the Priority Development Assistance Fund from legislators now humbles them. Gone are the days when we all ran to our congressman or senator as if he or she were Santa Claus.
They now look like those legislators in Singapore or in Germany who make laws and not dangle political favors. But to allow the presidency to lord it over those funds and transfer the power of that purse to Malacañang is a step in the wrong direction. I agree with the proposal of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III to transfer these funds directly to the local government executives as well as the line agencies.
True, there will be some amount of corruption there but it is easier to monitor the flow of funds for projects when they are funded at the local level.
If there is anything good that Edsa ever achieved it is the empowerment of local governments, the increase in their revenue allotments, and the entry of nongovernment organizations in local interest advocacy. At the end of the day, it is not the national celebrations and national remembrances that remind us of Edsa. It is how local governments address issues that affect the people on the ground that matter.
It is there where the spirit of Edsa must live. After all, without the people, Ramos, Enrile and Cory Aquino would have been wiped out by those tanks in 1986. It is time to give the power of Edsa back to the Filipino people.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
