Fuente Osmeña Circle | CDND Photo/ Gerard Vincent Francisco
This story was first published on February 24, 2022.
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Nearly four decades later, the People Power Revolution on February 25, 1986 remains, to this day, one of the most significant events in recent Philippine history.
The series of protests, particularly along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), toppled the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies. This is why the People Power Revolution is also called EDSA People Power or the EDSA Revolution.
But did you know that events leading to the People Power Revolution also transpired in areas outside Metro Manila, including Cebu?
February 22, 1986
The late President Corazon Aquino and her running mate back then, former Vice President Salvador Laurel, flew to Cebu after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on February 7, 1986 declared Marcos as the winner of the Snap Elections.
The Aquino-Laurel tandem joined with thousands of Cebuanos in Fuente Osmeña Circle that day for the Civil Disobedience Campaign. The campaign’s objective was to encourage Filipinos to boycott establishments and businesses owned by Marcos’ cronies. At that time, the opposition movement has already thrived in Cebu province.
Participants of the Civil Disobedience Campaign marched from Fuente Osmeña Circle towards the Capitol along Osmeña Boulevard.
Eventually, Cebu City’s iconic rotunda would not only become a landmark of anti-Marcos protests but also as a witness to several peaceful, post-Martial Law demonstrations from various groups. In 2014, the late President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III credited Cebu as the first place ‘where the struggle to restore democracy began’.
But Aquino and Laurel’s stay in Cebu would be prolonged as her supporters urged her to stay in the province capital for her own safety.
Aquino, Laurel, together with her daughter, Kris (then 14 years old) and brother, Jose ‘Peping’ Cojuangco, would stay in the Carmelite Monastery, a ‘Papal enclosure’, in Brgy. Mabolo for a night. However, the task of carrying out their security was no easy feat.
To trick military agents tailing Cory, a convoy of vehicles with Cory supposedly in one of them made its way to the Cebu Airport on Mactan Island.
Cory was actually being driven to the monastery by the late Cebu City Councilor Antonio Cuenco, who was also one of Cebu’s leading opposition figures.
February 23, 1986
Cory’s party left Cebu and flew back to Manila around 11 a.m.
READ MORE
- From Edsa to Fuente Osmeña
- The day the Carmelite nuns hid Cory
- Cebu and the days leading to February 25, 1986
- How some of Cebu’s youth leaders see Edsa ‘People Power’ Revolution