In search of a personal legacy, a direct and hopefully heroic connection to a crossroads in their nation’s history, postwar children asked their fathers, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?”
A similar curiosity should nag children yet unborn during Edsa or too young to have any memory of it. Better yet, a serious inquiry, a holding to account, should be undertaken for them.
For, unlike the war, Edsa was no mere moment in history, but, in Renato Constantino’s phrase, “a continuing past.” For all its brutality, the war was a simpler proposition: fight or collaborate or try to sleep it off, then try to forget all about it. With Edsa, anyone caught in it is dogged for life.
Lasting lessons
Four days of standing one’s ground, along with a million other occasional patriots, in a street vigil for freedom may have finally ended 14 years of a plundering, murdering dictatorship, but it is what has or has not happened afterwards that holds lessons of any lasting substance.
I didn’t stand any piece of Edsa ground myself. I was safely indoors some kilometers away, editing a newspaper, presiding over its chronicling of the event. If I found myself at Edsa at all, it was in moments between editions, during lulls, when the fervor of both the event and its chronicling had subsided for the day.
At any rate, I went out to do my little dutiful walk of history. I guess, it still counts—as a best effort.
But who’s counting? Where, in the first place, have all the Edsa patriots gone? These questions, raised in the current commemoration, tend to imply a ritual that serves only to perpetuate a historic default.
The patriots of Edsa are older of course by a full generation—30 years; many of them, if around still, would thus have become slowed or rendered altogether inactive and, in addition, forgetful, a condition not necessarily worse than the other two. A survey of those 30 years may even prove kind to a futile memory.
No sooner had the masses of Edsa dispersed homeward to contemplate their victory privately, as probably only fitting given its spiritual quality—swiftly won, blood-free, miraculous—than renegades broke ranks and turned against the leader installed by the revolt itself. Nine coups d’état were plotted, seven actually mounted. Not one succeeded, but the seeds of divisions had been sown—divisions that in no time grew so deep and multiform that sacrilegious appropriations of the spirit of Edsa would be inspired.
Spectacular case
A most spectacular case involved another plundering president. Himself deposed Edsa-fashion in mid-term, he rallied his loyalists for a counter-Edsa, but they failed to collect the critical mass required by Edsa standards. He was subsequently convicted in court, imprisoned, but quickly pardoned by his successor, his crime erased, as if he had not committed it. All political freedoms and rights thus restored to him, he has managed to worm his way back to power. Now mayor of the premier city, he is thumbing up his nose at Edsa.
Similar outrageous fortune has shone upon the Edsa renegades; rewarded yet—and repeatedly—with the vote, their leaders now occupy high office and are aiming even higher.
But the most outrageous deal yet has gone to Edsa’s original enemy. A mere six years after being driven out of power and into American exile, the dictator’s family was back, unpunished and unrepentant, in fact blatantly extolling its patriarch, demanding a hero’s funeral for him. He lies in a preserved state, awaiting the patently undeserved honor, which, if the nation stays true to its shallow, self-seeking culture, should come in time.
In fact, the odds have been going his way inexorably. His family has reestablished itself in positions of power and patronage—his widow sits in Congress, one daughter is governor of his native province while the other has reclaimed her place in high society, and his son, already a third-term senator, is a front-runner in the contest for vice president.
Most improved
It feels like a lost 30 years; in fact it feels as though we had gone backwards from Edsa and begun raising the dead dictator to give him another go at it—maybe this time he’d finish us off. Of course, it’s sick!
For a moment recently I actually felt a lift looking at a review comparing surveys of post-Edsa presidencies. It showed that Filipinos felt their lives most improved under the current presidency and naturally gave it their highest trust. I was incredulous; having never seen such widespread confession to contentment, I wondered if there actually was an even more widespread sense of contentment than was confessed to.
But turning to pre-election polls, I get floored as suddenly as I got lifted. I get no logical validation of what I just saw. In fact I see the precise opposite—I sense distrust and dissatisfaction. Or else why are the administration candidates not even rating competitively? Pretentious newcomers, dirty old names and all manner of rascals are in fact beating them.
If the spirit of Edsa lives, I’m in another moment.
