Carvajal: Romancing Edsa

Our latest commemoration of Edsa people power revolution didn’t seem to have the usual zip anymore. Just as well because of the sobering irony that we have elected president the son of the dictator we ousted at Edsa. It should, therefore, be to nobody’s surprise that our political officials are behaving like Edsa never happened. Today they are deceitfully pushing to solidify and perpetuate their power to dominate the Filipino people with a fake people’s initiative for charter change.

That is how much more brazen they have become since Edsa. That is how much less they pay people heed after Edsa. That’s how much less they care to solve the poverty of the Filipino people. All they seem to want is perpetuate themselves in power, the main item in their elitist agenda.

Yet, the sad thing is it’s not entirely their fault. A lot of it is ours. We have so far refused to unite into a broad-based moderate left coalition strong enough to counterbalance the dominance of the extreme right and peaceful enough to negate the violence of the extreme left.

The Catholic Church, hesitant to abandon its privileged position in society, shies away from unequivocal condemnation of injustices in the prevailing system. The Communist Party, in the throes of an armed revolution, is more interested in being its lead agent than in changing people’s lives for the better. Faith-based activists are wary of being red-tagged and the faceless rest are either waiting for a miracle or just trying to make the best of a very bad situation.

We had rallies, wreath laying’s and fora, all feel-good activities that our national officials paid no heed. There was even a forum on the American empire to see if it is coming or going. Yet the question is not if or how soon the American empire will end but how soon will the Filipino nation become self-reliant, self-directed and inclusively sustainable. The US empire will end as all empires do. When it ends, it should not happen that all we can do is clutch at the apron strings of the replacement empire.

We cannot survive as a nation on the wings of Edsa’s euphoric memory. The call now is for all social agents to toss their political, economic and cultural pet peeves and come together in a broad-based coalition to effect peaceful economic and political reforms in Philippine society, reforms that make the perennially losing majority of our people come out finally as winners.

Edsa was truly a proud moment in our nation’s life. Still, it’s time we stop romancing it and instead accept the hard truth that Edsa did not gain us anything more than an exhilarating memory. You can analyze it until you are blue in the face and the fact still remains that at Edsa the Filipino people got nothing more than the intoxicating euphoria of the momentous event but the country’s elite won the day with their continued control of the country’s wealth and power.

And that, sadly, is who we still are 38 years after Edsa, pawns in the game politicians play.