Those who are inclined to think that the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution has lost its significance today need to think again and think hard.
People power remains relevant not only because President Rodrigo Duterte is becoming more and more a copy of the autocrat that Filipinos booted out in 1986.
It remains meaningful not only because the living relatives of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos are back in the corridors of power though they have issued no apology and made no amends for their sack of the archipelago that ended 32 years ago.
It remains significant not only since the Constitution to which it eventually gave birth and which restored our democratic spaces is in imminent danger of being twisted into a document that justifies tyranny.
People power is still part of the zeitgeist precisely because it is being belittled and being denied even though it is alive to those who would pay heed and nothing, ironically, proves the vibrance of a thing than the vicious or infantile attempts to deny or ignore its existence.
Though Communications Secretary Esther Uson made a clown of herself by saying that the prayer of the nuns before the tanks at Edsa was nothing but a staged act, people power is here to stay.
By this we do not mean the cheap, desperate imitations of people power organized by chief policeman Ronald de la Rosa who was accessory to an act of staging in the weekend walks for “Tokhang”, the flagship anti-drug drive of the government that has seen thousands gunned down without due process.
In Cebu, people power was shown in the penitence of those who rose at dawn on Saturday, February 24 to join the procession for life organized by lay persons of the Archdiocese of Cebu.
The procession was a prayerful protest against the campaign against drugs that has audaciously favored the elimination rather than the rehabilitation and rectification of wrongdoers.
Similar processions were held across the country as in Manila, Cagayan de Oro, Laguna and Tarlac.
Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma merely echoed what the people have been registering through the opinion polls.
There is support for the President but there is deep apprehension over the bloodshed that has characterized his crackdown on narcotics.
The people are raising their voices against violence.
Woe to those who play deaf and keep on playing the game of carnage.
They will be undone. Justice will prevail. It is only a matter of time.
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