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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| The Incredible Shrinking Edsa Crowd By Antonio C. Abaya Written March 01, 2005 For the Manila Standard, March 03 issue On February 25, 1986, there were varying estimates on the number of people who massed at EDSA, between Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame. Some put it at one million, others at two million. I put it at closer to half a million. Which included my three then teen-aged children and I. (My wife was stranded in San Francisco because of the closure of the Manila International Airport). On the evening of Friday, February 22, while the embattled Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos and other mutineers were holed up in Camp Aguinaldo, holding their press conference, my son and I, after dropping off her sister at a party in Magallanes, decided to pass through Fort Bonifacio to see if anything was going on there. The sentries at the Villamor Bridge gate would not let us in because they were on �Red Alert.� But after the usual Pinoy paki-usap, one sentry asked me my name. I gave it to him. He asked if I was related to (PC) General Antonio P. Abaya, then head of the Constabulary Highway Patrol Group; I said we were cousins (although we really are not.) He saluted me smartly and, without bothering to ask to see my ID, waved us in. So much for Red Alert. We saw at least a dozen 6x6 trucks being loaded with Marines in full battle gear, together with several Jeeps mounted with .50 cal machine-guns. This was no game. They really looked like they meant business. On the hunch that they were preparing to storm the mutineers, we foolishly drove on to Camp Aguinaldo, hoping to see some bang-bang action. But they never got there. We drove around the Camp Aguinaldo perimeter wall several times, but there was absolutely no one there. The only gate that was open was the one on Santolan Road. The same with Camp Crame. EDSA was deserted and so were the side streets . Bored from waiting, we went home. We found out the next day that the Marines that we saw had gone to Malacanang, to reinforce the defenses there. If those Marines had been ordered to storm Camp Aguinaldo instead while the area was deserted, Enrile and Ramos and company would have been wiped out, and our president today would be either Imelda Marcos or Danding Cojuangco. Potemkin EDSA On February 25, 2003, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer of the following day, only 500 celebrants showed up at the EDSA Shrine, slightly outnumbered by 600 security policemen. (See my column �People Power Goes Pffffft,� March 12, 2003.) So from 1986 to 2003, the EDSA crowd shrunk from at least half a million to only half a thousand, a shrinkage to one-tenth of one percent of its original size, or to virtually nothing., in only 17 years. It speaks volumes of the disenchantment of the middle class, the shock troops of EDSA 1 and 2, with the political leadership that People Power brought to the fore in 1986 and 2001. I do not know what happened in 2004 as I was too busy with something else to notice, but in February 2005, things have not improved in EDSA at all, which may be symptomatic of the entire country�s malaise, the �cultural pessimism� and �moral exhaustion� that General Jose Almonte so eloquently spoke about in a recent speech.. I get only three broadsheets every morning. In the Feb. 26 issue of the Manila Standard, there is no picture at all of the crowd that went to EDSA the previous day, nor is there an estimate in the news story of the number of people who showed up. There is only a close-up photo (so close you cannot see the crowd, if any) of President Arroyo signing what is said to be the United Nations Convention against Corruption, in the presence of former Presidents Ramos and Aquino, and House Speaker De Venecia, which may have triggered an auto-response in many readers� subconscious, such as what about Gen. Garcia and Gen. Ligot, what about the PEA-Amari real estate scam, what about the AFP modernization fund? In the front page of the Feb. 26 issue of Today, there is neither a photo of the crowd or of the VIPs who attended, nor an educated guess on how many showed up. The focus of the sparse 10-inch story on EDSA was the inability or reluctance, supposedly due to poor health, of Cardinal Sin to get up from his car to address the �crowd,� the first time in 19 years that the cardinal, one of the key players in the original EDSA, has failed to do so. Perhaps Cardinal Sin felt it was demeaning to him to be addressing the 1,500 security policemen assigned to the non-event, and practically nobody else. At least, the Philippine Daily Inquirer had its series of personal reminiscences of some of those who were there in 1986. But in its Feb. 26 issue, the PDI also had no estimate or pictures of the crowd .The only photo is that of President Arroyo, with former Presidents Ramos and Aquino and a bishop, releasing a giant Filipino flag made up of balloons. But it is a low-angle shot, meaning it was taken from about waist-high and looking up, so nothing can be seen in the background except the top of the EDSA monument; no glimpse of the crowd, if there was one. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that media was inveigled, or allowed itself to be inveigled, by the Malacanang spin masters not to run any pictures of the crowd (because there was none) and not to come up with estimates on how many showed up (because they were so few). All the news that�s fit to print, in a thimble. So what newspaper readers saw on their front pages on Feb. 26 was a poorly choreographed Potemkin EDSA, with the principal participants unable even to force a smile to convince anyone that they were celebrating anything but their own political demise. Cardinal Sin was correct in declining to get up from his car. How would President Arroyo look if, weeks or months from now, Susan Roces or Bro. Eddie Villanueva were to call for a protest rally against electoral fraud and against corruption, and one million warm bodies show up? What revolution? In her article in the Feb. 23 issue of the Inquirer, my friend Eggy Apostol, founder and original chair of the Inquirer, quoted the late Ambassador Narciso Reyes� insight on EDSA, first published in the Nov. 2, 1986 issue of the paper: �The unstated goal of People Power Revolution was not a mere change of regimes, but rather a systemic change, a real social transformation�..This will entail not only a change of leaders but also � and more important � a change of heart on the part of the new leadership. In this sense, the People Power Revolution was a prelude, rather than a complete fulfillment. The real Revolution is yet to be�.� Those who have not outgrown their adolescent infatuation with �socialist revolution� have taken heart from this bourgeois prognostication that their allegedly scientific utopia is still coming even if the empirical evidence is one of continuing failure and irrelevance. Eggy has resurrected this insight, with which no one is likely to disagree, to refocus on the �Education Revolution� which she and then Education Secretary E. J. de Jesus launched with much fanfare and many full page ads in print media in October 2002. The thrust of this �Revolution� was to convince communities to �adopt a school,� and to awaken in teachers the awareness of their role in shaping the values of young people. While no one can possibly quarrel with these worthy goals, one must caution against the over-use of the word �revolution� as it may raise expectations that are hard to live up to. �Revolution� is best used long after the fact, when the �revolutionary� effects are much in evidence, not before or during the process, no matter how well-meaning and sincere. People Power �Revolution� is a case in point: it failed to live up to its self-billing Besides, a survey done by the advertising firm McCann Erickson has shown that the values of young Filipinos are not shaped in school (or at home or in church) but by media, especially television and the movies. So even if our teachers, many of whom have shipped out to work as domestic helpers abroad, do manage to impart solid middle-class values like thrift, hard work, honesty, love of country, selflessness, devotion to duty, respect for women, and frugality�..these are negated when the students are at home or with their peers and imbibe the values imparted by movies and TV: self-gratification, materialism, me-first mentality, insatiable appetite for consumer goods, worship of foreign icons, a culture of sex, drugs and pornography, non-stop violence as entertainment, toilet humor, ostentatious lifestyles, immersion in showbiz culture, and other anti-social values. The real Revolution has to be waged in and against media, and it would take a real revolutionary leader to prevail against the insidious media culture. Indeed, �the real Revolution is yet to be.� ******. Reactions to [email protected] or fax 824-7642. Other articles in www.tapatt.org. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �The Incredible Shrinking EDSA Crowd� Dear Tony, Unknown to you, I have been a constant reader of your columns. Do continue to keep me in your mailing list. One of these days you should publish them in a book. I just archived your latest on EDSA I. I will read it again when my eyes get clearer (old age; cataract; diploplia (sp?). When EDSA I happened, I was in the US. Eva and I were in a big car with friends headed for Washington DC. We heard over the radio that Enrile and Ramos were joining forces and one of them, Fidel, jumped from Camp Crame to Camp Aguinaldo ro join Enrile� or it could have been vice versa. There are many ways of remembering EDSA I. Those present (participant or supporter) can write an "I was there" report. The other: If you were not there, (abroad or out in the countryside) one could report on: Where I was when it happened and it had this effect on me, family, friends, etc. The other is: I was not born even then but I heard my elder sibling recounting the story. This could be a very good idea for a book. People tend to forget so easily. I am sending you my last project. I remember the Erewhon which was the first supporter of my peso books which I set up with a donation (from Fernando Zobel de Ayala, a stranger to me then and up to now (God bless his soul) P400 (= today to $10 or less under the administrations of Erap or Gloria A. I have never published a page since i moved to the US with my family. I have been busy with my computer: websites, ezine, blogs, etc. How would you like to publish this last peso book. Follow the old peso book format and it should cost less compared with coffeetable books now or the regular books. I have a subscription of One.Story which has given me 3 issues of One.Story, literally one story to an issue, 16-32 pps. sent every month for $21 per year except foreign orders. Did you ever see the Little Blue Book of E. Haldeman Julius of Chicago issued in the 30s? They were selling for cents or a dollar. The liberation G.I.s had them in their pockets together with the EM editions and the wartime reprint of classics (two pages of the original book to a side of a sheet *horizontal format). I got my inspiration for the Peso book from him, E. Haldeman Julius, whoever he was. You don�t have to respond to this. I know how busy a man like you are. It's like being "in the trenches" in the times of GMA, Erap, Fidel, and (skip Cory) Marcos. Let's pray for the country. Bert Florentino, [email protected] New York, March 03, 2005 MY REPLY. Sorry, Bert, but I am no longer in the book business, whether publishing or retailing. Many people have suggested publishing my articles in book form. Maybe when I become famous. In the meantime, the tapatt website is my �book.� Good to hear from you again. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Tony: Again, a nice piece. It will be a real start though, if we can dub EDSA '86 for what it was meant to be and succeded in doing: grab of power. Same I believe in EDSAII. Come to think of it, why hold elections? EDSA can be the cheapest way to install new leaders. Let's call it EDSA democracy. See if the rest of the world follows. Dan, [email protected] March 03, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . Tony, If I remember my Ateneo lectures, I believe you were talking of a Greek word, metanoia, or the inner transformation of the mind and the heart and the soul of a person. The kind of change or the kind of revolution that the Philippines needs can not occur without this metanoia. The metanoia in and of itself is a bigger more meaningful revolution than several EDSA I through MM. Thomas Kuhn, the author of The Scientific Revolution, said that dramatic changes in the physical world occur silently and invisibly before these changes become manifest. Thanks for your article. Manny Tiangha, [email protected] California, March 04, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony, Very interesting and very subtle. Hope the message gets across. Cesar Sarino, [email protected] March 04, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . Dear Tony, To me, EDSA is synonymous with Marcos. Since the latter is no longer an "issue" (thanks to the justice system), the former becomes irrelevant. Ergo, EDSA is a function and co-terminus with Marcos and his ilk. Thus, the shrinking and bland celebration. It takes another stage or arena to dramatize protest and disgust against GMA administration, corrupt government and elected officials, but not EDSA. Thanks. Rgds, Jerome Escobedo, [email protected] March 04, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Reading your recent article about the "Incredible Shrinking EDSA" has made me very depressed. Maybe, we Filipinos would not be in this present mess if we took a lesson from the attached. BMF, [email protected] March 04, 2005 Note: forwarded message attached. MY REPLY. Unfortunately, my computer could not read your attachment (The Geese). Please try resending it as email. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I appreciate much your boldness to say that "the real Revolution has to be waged in and against media." I totally agree the idea that mainstream media is practically funnelling in garbage to the children's mind particularly television. Even some news reports are nothing but political propaganda depending on which side the owner/management supports. Parents have now the greatest challenge to inculcate good moral values to their children in this information age - with tv, movies, internet. The mind of children is no longer shaped by the parents core value system but by the external environment particularly the media as they spend more time in front of the boob tube. Through soap opera, movies and other tv programs corruption, stealing, fornication, adultery and other wrongdoings were treated to be normal. Well, this is the current reality. Knowing the mindsets of this present liberal society, I just don't know if such a Revolution you are talking of will materialize. Driggs Matabaran, [email protected] March 04, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Filipinos are like this. They easily forget the past. Alexander Carranceja, [email protected] Kuwait, March 05, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww I printed out your column on EDSA I and will give the hard copy to Eggie Apostol as she is mentioned therein and does not know how to access the Internet or e-mail. Aida Sevilla Mendoza, [email protected] March 06, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Tony , I think I might have suggested that you might write about a creative tourism tour the Philippines could cash in on. The big thrill here in the States is the Tango Tour that Argentina has recently launched. Besides hotel accommodations the tour package includes lessons in world-famous Argentinian Tango ! Why don't we think up of something like that which would be a particular Philippine attraction ? How about a Philippine Corruption Tour ? Think of the many places and offices where you could thrill tourists at the open and ingenious ways corruption is practiced there ! Take them to any police station, to any traffic street corner , to Congress when a bill is being debated, to City Hall, to Dept of Public Works, to the Motor Vehicles Office, and don't forget -- to the Justice Department and courts ! Dick Taylor, [email protected] March 04, 2005 Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Being here in Davao City has kept us from being physically present at EDSA. Nonetheless, we've kept solidarity with its aspiration for the restoration of freedom and democracy with our own mass actions over the three momentous days. Let me assure you then that the shrinking crowd at the annual EDSA celebration is no measure of our continuing desire for freedom and democracy. Yes, we're terribly disappointed with the failure of our political leaders to give more meaning to freedom and democracy with justice and prosperity. Yet we continue to believe that justice is not possible and prosperity will have no meaning without freedom and democracy. We're prepared to have as many EDSAs as possible to defend freedom and democracy. Right now the threat comes not from a direct challenge to freedom and democracy. It comes from the trapos and the greedy who have connived to undermine freedom and democracy by associating them with corruption, injustice and poverty. Soon the "moral exhaustion" that JoAl refers to may become widespread and make people less inclined to defend freedom and democracy against self-proclaimed revolutionaries. The EDSA network nationwide is very much alive and concerned by the turn of events. The wires are burning and meetings are again taking place. I wouldn't be surprised if people would soon come together to demand good governance from the existing political leadership and social responsibility from the economic elite. Regards, Gico Dayanghirang, [email protected] Davao City, March 06, 2005 MY REPLY. I�m with you there as long as you realize that, strictly speaking, EDSA uprisings are not the constitutional or �democratic� way to change governments, that a government put in place through extra-constitutional means may elect to change the constitution to an extent not acceptable to liberals or communists. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |