The recent developments in the Middle East has brought me to reminisce on a similar event that took place in my country, the Philippines twenty-five years ago this month. As I witnessed the recently successful struggle for democratic reform in Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of brave men and women, in solidarity for the cause of freedom and democracy peacefully and ultimately brought down a cruel and malevolent dictator, I can't help but look back on what many around the world consider as the blueprint for modern democratic revolution. The February 1986 Philippine uprising-the People Power revolt.
In Manila on February 25, 1986, longtime Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his family were hastily spirited away by American military personnel from the presidential palace as his 20-year regime came to an inglorious end. In the aftermath of a highly disputed and scandalously fraudulent presidential election result, many thousands of ordinary Filipinos took to the streets of Manila and it's surrounding environs, in support of Marcos challenger Corazon C. Aquino and her call for a country-wide civil disobedience campaign. On February 22nd, as the fear of an impending government crackdown began to envelop the Philippine capital like a dark cloud, Marcos' defense minister and longtime political associate Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces second-in-command (and Marcos' cousin) Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos broke ranks with the government and firmly placed their support for the people's quest for change. Together with a handful of reform-minded and heavily armed soldiers, they holed up in Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Ministry of National Defense to take a symbolic stand against their former boss. What happened in the next four days would completely baffle political watchers everywhere and irrevocably change the political order, not only in the Philippines but elsewhere around the world. Unique and historical. Revolution through non-violence. And it all happened on a Greater Manila thoroughfare called Epifanio delos Santos Avenue-or simply known as EDSA.
Ironically, the very root of it all came from one violent act two and a half years earlier. On August 21, 1983, Opposition leader and Marcos' political arch-nemesis Benigno Ninoy Aquino was assassinated by his military escorts just minutes after landing at Manila's International airport. The former senator, in ending his more than three-year exile in the United States, publicly stated that he was seeking a dialogue with his tormentor in the hopes of perhaps finding a path to democratization through "political reconciliation". In reality, Aquino offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb, knowing that his death through political assassination might bring about worldwide attention and condemnation to the brutal regime of Ferdinand E.Marcos. More importantly, his death could be the messianic symbol that might help embolden his countrymen and shake off their apathy and indifference towards a fascist dictatorship. And on both of those, it did.
The political and economic consequences of the Aquino assassination reverberated almost immediately. Mere months after the tragedy, the Philippine economy lay in ruins as foreign capital took flight out of the country besieged by political instability and rocked further by speculation that the Marcos administration was the prime mover behind Aquino's slaying. The upheaval caused enormous pressure on Marcos (and his enablers in Washington, D.C.) that in late 1985 during an interview on Ted Koppel's ABC news show Nightline, the embattled Philippine leader himself made a surprise announcement. He was calling for a snap presidential election, slated for February 7th of the following year, in order to secure a new mandate, or in his own words-a new covenant with the Filipino people. Unyielding in his quest to hang on to power despite local and international condemnation, the president was relying on his vast wealth and a divided political opposition to deliver his new covenant. And if all else fails, he had the overwhelming support of the generals and the commanding officers of his military and state police forces.
Like all fading dictators, Marcos misread the true will of his own people. Ensconced in his palace and surrounded by sycophants, the president underestimated the anger and frustration that was spilling out on the surface. And as expected, he rolled out his battle-tested political machinery for an election campaign, backed up by coercion, intimidation and in several cases, deadly violence to achieve his "covenant". But the Filipinos have had enough. On election day, they showed up in record numbers. And despite the threats of violence, they stayed on to safeguard for their most precious possession. Their right of free choice. And the choice was overwhelmingly in favour of change. And when the call was made by the opposition forces to support the Marcos mutineers entrenched inside the military camp on EDSA Avenue to protest the fraudulent election, they came in droves. Then-Colonel Gregorio Gringo Honasan, one of the popular figures of the February revolution, while on board a military helicopter to survey strategic positions put the gathered crowd at it's peak to be in the neighbourhood of two million upwards. More than two million Filipinos buffering two factions of the military, one for the fascist regime and one for a new beginning, both intent on armed confrontation. More than two million civilians who laid down in front of tanks and armoured carriers, clamouring for change. And for peace. In the end, peace won. Freedom won. And the people won.
As I watched the unfolding events in Egypt on TV, in the aftermath of Hosni Mubarak's flight from power, I heard a familiar refrain from people being interviewed by the world media in the streets of Cairo, the epicenter of the Egyptian revolution. Almost to a person, they proclaimed the same words----I am so proud to be an Egyptian. I have an intimate knowledge of that feeling.
On the evening of February 25, 1986, upon hearing the news of Marcos' complete downfall, I rushed off to the Quezon City Rotunda to watch the victorious crowd of EDSA as they marched along the circle. Standing there, continuously clapping hard until my hands were sore, I remember tears uncontrollably flowed down my face and as I looked around, the people standing alongside me were crying, too. Surely not for the fallen dictator but for his victims. Foremost in my mind was Ninoy Aquino, whose sacrifice touched off a movement so dedicated to the struggle for justice and freedom and whose own widow was now in charge of cleaning up the mess that Marcos and his minions left behind. On the walk back home, I felt something I had never felt before. I was so proud of my homeland and my countrymen. For the first time in my life, I was proud of who I am. A Filipino.
And the whole world watched in total amazement.
Three years later, in 1989 and the era of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, I watched as the totalitarian Soviet eastern bloc states began to crumble. Like dominoes, they fell one by one. Czechoslovakia. Hungary. Poland. East Germany. Romania. Yugoslavia. Culminating in the fall of the entire Soviet Union itself in late 1991. Without a single shot fired, the cold war was over. And the international communist movement was dead. Not through military action or violent uprising. But spurred by people powered revolution. The same phenomenon that swept away a right-wing dictator in the Philippines three years earlier; the same phenomenon that is sweeping the Mideast today.
Democracy at it's purest form. Of the people. For the people. And by the people.
For in the end, state power rests in the hands of it's people. No amount of guns, goons and gold can match a unified citizenry and their will to be free. That there is no justice to be had through violence. And that violence only begets further violence. To entrench yourself and your own interest against a people's will puts you on a path of confrontation where you would eventually face the wrath of raw power. The power of the people.
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