The controversial ZTE scandal which involved Mr. Lozada has called upon national interest, and has stirred national awareness. Awareness to the point of calling yet another EDSA Revolution that has been like a tradition of Filipinos who are oppressed by the government. The rallyists, mostly students, have been clamoring for the name of truth and President Arroyo’s ousting. Students from various schools, colleges and universities have been gathering and building unions and organizations to express their notions and their desires to eject a corrupt president and to let out the truth that has been kept away and hidden safely in the nooks and crannies of the Malacanang Palace. The students, backed up by their teachers and their little knowledge of social concerns and political ethics, parade in different areas trying to advocate their stand, which is actually a well-versed cliché: People Power, Democracy. Neither of them have a reasonable cause if abused. People Power, PP from here on, is defined as “The power capacity of a mobilized population and its institutions using nonviolent forms of struggle. The term was especially used during the 1986 Philippine nonviolent insurrection.”[1] PP has been a very strong source of democratic struggle especially in the Philippines, where the term was poignantly coined.
Democracy
No universally accepted definition of 'democracy' exists, especially with regard to the elements in a society which are required for it. [2] There is, however, a strict definition of democracy posed by Merriam-Webster Dictionary: 1 a: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections2: a political unit that has a democratic government.[3] This states that a democratic nation is ruled by the majority, which happens to be the cynical waving crowd who admires celebrities like gods: the Masses. Is the Philippines a democratic nation? We elect the president, not the other way around. We ‘hire’ our government officials in the relentless pursuit of justice and equality, we give them their salary in form of taxes1, and they serve us by doing their job of upholding our rights and dignity. This is the ideal way of putting things around. However, because most of our countrymen are illicitly illiterate, they tend to overlook and magnify their roles in Filipino society. They tend to overact their roles as the majority by abusing the powers vested in them. And the abuse of power is no other than the magnanimously notorious PP Revolution.
Filipinos and their People Power Revolutions
EDSA Revolution pertains to three events in the course of Philippine History. The first one, in 1986, was the one in which Marcos’ 22-year regime was finally ended. The second one was EDSA Revolution of 2001 that toppled the administration of Joseph Estrada after an aborted impeachment trial where prosecutors walked out after failing on a motion. [4] And believe it or not, there is an EDSA 3 that climaxed in the siege of the presidential palace while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remained in office after the arrest of Joseph Estrada. Of all these PP revolts, only the first one can be considered legitimately and whole-heartedly executed. The death of a senator of the opposition led to the bloodless revolt called People Power:
Aquino's death then triggered the revolution. Enough is enough. It was time for Ferdinand Marcos to go. Then three years after the assassination, a mass of people gathered in the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue. Their immediate objective was to prevent the armed conflict between the AFP men loyal to the president and the AFP men under the minister of National Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile and the head of the Philippine Constabulary, General Fidel V. Ramos. The mass of people that gathered in EDSA, side by side, with rosaries and other sacramentals in their hands, offered the soldiers (those on the side of the president) of the advancing tanks peace by giving them flowers and rosaries and water. The message was clear: we are all Filipinos, and we need not fight each other. We are a nation of the same blood, of the same race. It is not each other we should fight. We should fight the one and true enemy of our land, the man who had cheated and deceived all of us, the man who is in Malacañang.
The EDSA Revolution is the first of its kind. No blood smeared in the streets, nobody was hurt. The oppressor was ousted and the people rejoiced. There was democracy once more. The Filipino people had made a stand and they stood firm by their belief. For them, this event will forever be in the history books and never will it die, for it embodies the true Filipino spirit alive in every individual Filipino. [5]
However, 15 years later, in 2001, yet another president was expelled from his rule: the celebrity shame of the Atenean race: Joseph Estrada. He won the 1998 elections for his popularity among the swaying masses and for his line, “Isang bala ka lang” (One bullet won’t spare you). The thwarting of this president’s regime was brought upon by the organized PP revolution primarily led by the middle class and the upperclassmen. [6] Do the upperclassmen consist of the whole nation in this democratic state? Do the middle class and upperclassmen define what a democratic mass is? Where is the other 70% of the nation, that percentage which is below the poverty line? I may say that the Filipino people have thwarted their leader last 2001, but was democracy really upheld?
Filipinos, again, have disposed of their leader. They have done it for the second time. They have forcedly ousted 2 leaders through their democratic power. Isn’t it a bit absurd, this using the power vested in them, against their leader? Isn’t that some sort of power-tripping of the Filipino people? Let’s face it.
Power-tripping the President and Abusing Democratic Powers
The masses want total control of society by thwarting their leader. They keep on using their democratic power against the president, or whoever leader is in place. I concede to the fact that people need to respond to this kind of oppression and corruption pro-actively. However, they have overlooked at the fact that democratic powers are also a sort of power that corrupts when abused. With great power comes great responsibility, as the cliché says. Unfortunately, the large swaying mass of the Filipinos is not yet ready for a powerful place in society: the rule of majority.
Masang Filipino, as dearly called by constituents, is not yet ready to take hold of the responsibility of leading a nation. They vote for popularity, not for the person’s level of moral sanity, or of social consciousness. And when they vote the wrong guy, all will go wrong.
The Rub
After voting for the wrong guy, the masses will surely be happy, for they have found the long-term solution to their endless problem of poverty. And so, months later, there will be a scandal involving their beloved leader and another mongrel. Then they will start rallying. Then they won’t stop rallying unless something bad happens. And then they would rally again. And after the plethora of rally-goers getting killed, the democratic force will step up, and then assuage the oppressed, saying that they will march up to EDSA and do a PP revolt. This cycle runs over and over again. Now that these masses want Pres. Arroyo out, who will they want to replace her? Who will they want to put in her stead? Unanswerable? Of course. There’s the rub. The People Power Movements are nothing but power-tripping against the government. These masses only want to be famous because they were able to ‘make a change’. But the change is not prominent. It is not even complete. The EDSA “revolution” was useless in that it had not yet led to the transformation of religious, political, economic, social, and other structures. [7] PP is nothing but a romantic notion of an abusive liberal society.
References:
[1] http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/glossary.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
[3] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSA_Revolution
[5] http://www.essortment.com/edsarevolution_rlkq.htm
[6] http://modernrevolutionse.podbean.com/2008/01/30/edsa-dos-revolution/
[7] Ileto, Reynaldo C. The Filipinos and their Revolution.: Event, discourse, and historiography. Reynaldo C. Ileto. Quezon City. ADMU Press, 1998
1By means of paying the government our taxes, which in turn, goes to their wallets and bank accounts or in Wack-Wack Golf and Country Club
