Fearing Edsa

fearing edsa

editorial02252024

So who’s afraid of Edsa, the 1986 people power revolt that ousted strongman President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and ended martial law, one of the darkest chapters in the country’s history?

The people behind Charter change (Cha-cha) for one, starting with those behind that controversial TV commercial aired in January. That 60-seconder was sponsored by Pirma, or the People’s Initiative for Reform, Modernization, and Action, the same group behind the 1997 unsuccessful attempt to remove constitutional term limits on elected officials.

One word stuck out like a sore thumb in that ad underwritten by donors who, given the ad’s vacuous message, understandably refused to be identified. That word is “Edsa-pwera,” a play on the colloquial term “etsa-pwera,” which means “excluded” or “rejected.”

Political dynasties

The TV commercial brazenly attributes the country’s ills to the 1987 Constitution, a product of the spontaneous four-day gathering that also restored the democratic space scrapped by martial law. As the ad would have viewers believe, Edsa was an event limited to a certain political demography that excluded the majority—na-Edsa-pwera. The scripted lines of the paid actors harped on how the Constitution needs to be changed since it had purportedly failed to deliver on its promises.

A statement from the #BuhayAngEDSA Campaign Network disputes this. The ad attempts to “diminish its legacy in our history as a nation and in our people’s continuing fight for justice and democracy,” it notes. The group adds that “as a post-dictatorship legacy, [the 1987 Constitution] provides powerful protections for our people’s rights … It also introduced fixed term limits for politicians, preventing their entrenchment in power and

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