Graphics: Kent Harvey Jobo
On February 25, 1986, a yellow revolution along Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) marked one of the most historical movements in the world: the People Power Revolution. It purged the authoritarian rule of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos for two decades, in the silhouette of a martial law period that cultivated state repression and political order, curtailed civil liberties, and proliferated human rights abuses.
Thirty-eight (38) years later, the sovereign Filipino people, reckoned on the promise of a new, accountable government, and a renewed commitment to democratic principles, with the new Constitution, which is now faced with concerns about charter change, perceived as a route to a constitutional reform to consolidate power in a way that goes against the spirit of the revolution.
As we look back to the success of the people's power, we lean forward to the attempts of upheaval. In 1997, President Fidel Ramos introduced a charter change through the People’s Initiative for Reform, Modernization, and Action (PIRMA), which sought a parliamentary system of government. In 1999, President Joseph Estrada formed the Constitutional Correction for Development (Concord), which pushed for the lifting of restrictions on the foreign ownership of business. In 2009, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration pitched a constitutional convention, through House Bill No. 486 proposing the composition of the legislature to be appointed by the president through an executive order. In 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte pushed for Federalism, which gives more autonomy and power to local governments. Sparking a ruse to stretch term limits and submit self-serving provisions into the constitution, all these attempts failed in the past because they encountered strong resistance from the people. With the return of the Marcoses, charter change is now, again, knocking at our doorstep; in March 2023, the House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting the election of a Constitutional Convention through Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 6. In January 2024, PIRMA initiated the attempt to get a valid number of signatures, associated with payments, to amend the Constitution. Underway is the RBH No. 7 — which mimics the Senate’s RBH No. 6 — both call for a constitutional assembly as a mode to amend the charter by restating the constitutional provision that Congress may propose amendments "upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members."
These undertakings demonstrate that democracy is not guaranteed, it is a war requiring collective action and ostentatious vigilance, to safeguard our independence and protect our rights, for the present and the posterity. As we celebrate the EDSA People Power as our contribution to the world civilization, disposing of a cruel regime through nonviolent sustained civil resistance, the movement propounds several lessons and poses arduous reiteration that then and now, the essence of freedom resides in our manful and mindful solidarities to mobilize against authoritarian oppression. The fight did not end in the stretch of EDSA on February 25, 1986, let today be a reminder that it has just begun.
