No EDSA Revolution

I wrote it once and I write it again: EDSA I was no revolution.
Thus, in the remembered verses of a sophomoric piece I scratched on a cigarette pack amidst the euphoria after the dictator fled:
Wala.
Walang himagsikan sa EDSA.
Kumaripas ng takbo ang lahi ni Hudas,
Pumalit nama’y lipi ni Barabas.
Ano ang nabago?
Mukha.
Hindi prinsipiyo.
Adhika ng liderato: palawigin ang status quo –
Piyudal na agraryo, burukrata kapitalismo,
Bansa’y sakmal pa rin ng puting tsonggo.
Aklas bayan, pinagsamantalahan
Trahedya ni Bonifacio muling nagka-ganapan,
Imbing ilustrado ang nakinabang.
Wala.
Walang himagsikan sa EDSA.
Burgis, uring naghahari pa rin;
Ang masa, sa araw at gabi ay inaalipustang alipin.
History teaches that liberation is an essence of revolution. Liberation, so to speak, is the resultant purification from the crucible that is the revolution: effecting the transformation of the state of national existence to a level supreme over the pre-revolutionary one.
So, what has EDSA effected?
Ferdinand Marcos was ousted and long dead. But unburied and waiting for a Libingan ng mga Bayani redemption. The Marcos kin alive and lording it over as if they were never chased out of the country like frightened mongrels: Bongbong Marcos is long-serving governor; Imee Marcos is long-serving representative; and the Imeldific, a long surviving butterfly, metamorphosing from the political to the purely pasosyal kind.
The Marcos ill-gotten wealth? Used as high priced manure sown on infertile political grounds that yielded a miracle crop known as Ginintuang Masaganang Ani . That was GMA in 2004, dummy.
In effect, that wealth was – for the nation – a Paradise Lost in Marcos, a Paradise Regained immediately post-EDSA, and a Paradise Lost, Again circa GMA.
Revolutions impact most upon the political system. So what do we have?
All platitudes to New Politics wrought by EDSA fall flat on the merest glance at a House of Representatives personified in Jose de Venecia. Trapo as trapo can be, Joe de V makes the strongest argument against any change in the political system. Disabuse the mind, stop entertaining the parliamentary nostrum as a cure-all to the country’s ills. With Joe de V, no system of government will ever work for the nation.
No, EDSA was no revolution. See the economic landscape. So the poor did not remain poor. They became poorer and multiplied. The rich became fewer. And enormously richer. What is the equation of inequity now? Less than eight percent of the Philippine population controls more than 90 percent of its wealth? The euphemism haves and haves-not has rightfully yielded to the more appropriate have-all and have-none in our economic index.
So how much was the peso-dollar exchange at the twilight of the Marcos dictatorship? P12-$1? So how much is it now? 74 Wowoweed lives to the peso, as one wag put it.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not hanker for a return to the Marcos years. Why should I when traces of the worst of the dictatorship – calibrated pre-emptive response, militarization of the countryside, assault on press freedom and the stifling of legitimate dissent, extra-judicial killings, etc. – are clear and present occurrences in the GMA regime.
There, that is one more argument that, indeed, there was no revolution at EDSA. Not in 1986. Not in 2001. Wala. Walang pagbabago. Saan ang himagsikan dito?
(Pampanga News, Feb. 23 - March 1, 2006)