February 25th, 2024, marks yet another anniversary of the EDSA People Power revolution, wherein millions of Filipinos gathered in prayer in the Epifanio de los Santos (EDSA) Avenue as a peaceful protest against the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., effectively concluding his years of deadly tyrannical reign. For this year, President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr. administration did not declare the Revolution as a non-working holiday: a stark exclusion to bury his father’s atrocities. With all due respect and in light of the Revolution's anniversary: time erases no blood.
The EDSA People Power Revolution anniversary commemorates the protest on February 25,1986, that marked the end of the Marcos Sr. tyranny and the beginning of the return of the nation's democracy. A memory of a battle hard-fought and hard-won by surviving and deceased protesters, journalists, and advocates, and all the victims alike in between, the anniversary has now faded into a muted alarm bell for a nation that sleeps as the direct descendant of its former oppressor reclaims the highest authority within the land.
While some survivors and families of the deceased victims gained justice and reparations, the gashes left onto those who remained runs deep. No amount of compensation can take back the fatalities that were inflicted: by the end of the iron-fisted ruler's reign, as reported by Amnesty International, as well as other human rights organizations, there were 70,000 imprisoned, 34,000 tortured, and 3,000 killed… all of which, unfortunately, are only based on rough estimations according to either known and/or documented cases. There were many more human rights violations left unrecorded throughout the country, all of which were left outside of the aforementioned bare estimations.
Moreover, the summarization of imprisonment, torture, and deaths into bare statistics has blurred the the details of the truth that has transpired, hiding the horrors behind numerical figures.
The specifications of the latter violations of human rights during the Martial Law have nearly faded from Filipinos’ memories. In the historian Michael Charleston Chua’s study entitled, “TORTYUR: Human Rights Violations During The Marcos Regime,” he recounted various details of the physical torture and atrocities against victims perpetuated during the Marcos Sr. tyranny, included, but not limited to: mutilation by burning, drugging, sexual assault, strangulation, among others. Juan Dela Cruz suffers apathy and ignorance from the disconnection induced by bare descriptions of the Martial Law.
As such, the conquest of the EDSA People Power Revolution was supposed to have become a gateway into developing a country enveloped by a strengthened sense of justice and awareness of the monstrosity and abominations that comes from the lack of its recognition and exercise. With time and the present as the proof, however, this gift of freedom is nothing more than a symbol for hollow victory.
In a twisted sense of Stockholm Syndrome, the doors of the country has opened up the pathway up until the highest possible position of authority, and it is in a tragic case of irony that the simultaneously rotten and gilded reputation of the victor's exiled predecessor was one of the very reasons for a landslide victory.
Watch now, how blaring warning signs shall fall upon deafened ears. Is the exclusion of the EDSA People Power Revolution from non-working holidays the last? Not even by a long shot; such an act could count as just testing the waters.
There is also the growing buzz about Charter Change, Cha-Cha for short, rearing its head into the 1987 constitution, painstakingly written after toppling the 1973 constitution that kept the deceased dictator Marcos Sr. in power even after his initial term of presidency.
The 1987 constitution is one of the few safeguards that ensures no lengthy presidential and other governmental positions remain; that, alongside foreign ownership which has barely kept the Philippines still in sovereignty over itself. These two points are currently among the major targets up for discussion as Cha-Cha discussions persist, all other genuine plights of the people be damned.
While many may say that education is a gateway to the brightest paths in life, there are other things that could get anyone into the heights of power once more. Wealth (preferably in unspeakable amounts, stolen), a silver tongue that can lull a nation into a false sense of security, down and deep under the pretenses of being a leader for the people, and last but not the least, historical revisionism with a magnitude of strength that can whitewash even the bloodstains left during one's father's regime.
One of the few things that kept the EDSA People Power Revolution and the purpose it served as an historical event within the memory of even its deniers and the apologists is its commemoration on February 25th. Recognized or not, the EDSA People Power Revolution anniversary will remain as proof that even with time, there shall be no blood erased.
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