After the return of the Marcoses to power in the 2022 presidential election, there were grave concerns about the legacy of the EDSA People Power Revolution – the non-violent people’s uprising that ousted the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Those concerns were not unfounded, shortly after assuming the presidency, the deposed authoritarian ruler’s only son and name – Ferdinand Jr. or “Bongbong” – worked to whitewash the story of People Power. The new Marcos Jr. government removed the historical event’s anniversary as a non-working public holiday, while President Marcos himself has signaled revising historical textbooks to sanitize the legacy of his late father.
Yet today, the legacy of the People Power Revolution faces an even bigger threat – being co-opted by a more insidious force for their own political gain.
As the Marcos family’s dalliance with the Duterte political faction crumbled early last year, there have been attempts to reprise this mass protest again to topple another Marcos by the pro-Duterte camp. Ironically, the previous Duterte administration played a significant role enabling the Marcoses to return to power and had maligned the tradition of the People Power Revolution.
It was Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, former president Rodrigo Duterte, who allowed the former’s late father to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (English: “Heroes’ Cemetery) in 2016 – a privilege that is standard for deceased heads-of-state but was denied to the late dictator due to his bloody and corrupt legacy. He also called Marcos Sr. a “hero” during celebrations marking the latter’s 100th birth anniversary back in 2017.
These actions ultimately normalized mainstream opinions on the first Marcos regime and changed how Filipinos viewed the dictator’s legacy. At the same time, the Dutertes also undermined the significance of the People Power Revolution during the six years they were in power.
During the 31st anniversary celebrations in 2017, the former president Duterte issued a statement saying the Filipino people needed “to move on” from those events in 1986. His daughter, then-Davao City mayor Sara Duterte, also likened the People Power Revolution to a “selective moral standard” after a Catholic bishop had accused her father of defacing its legacy.
Having known what we know now, the younger Duterte further cemented the Marcoses return to Malacañang Palace by agreeing to be his running-mate in the 2022 presidential election – forming the alliance known as “UniTeam”. That partnership proved fragile however, as the two political dynasties broke camp and are now at each other’s throats.
Despite how much support they threw behind the Marcoses and how much they trivialized the 1986 mass uprising, the Dutertes began appropriating the spirit of the EDSA Revolution for their own political survival. This was particularly the case when Vice President Duterte received scrutiny for alleged misappropriation of public funds both in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and in her previous role as secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd).
When VP Duterte’s chief-of-staff, Zuleika Lopez, was ordered to be held in contempt after her elusive responses while facing a House of Representatives inquiry, figureheads of the pro-Duterte camp rushed to call their supporters to stage a rally at the EDSA Shrine. The Duterte camp also organized a “mass rally” at EDSA that would call for President Marcos Jr. to step down, however this rally failed to even remotely attract the numbers it expected.
This botched attempt to replicate the People Power Revolution was also reportedly offering cash to anyone who attended. The failure in execution and their sheer audacity to copy a historical event their family and supporters had ridiculed for years was not enough embarrassment for the Dutertes; in this year’s iteration of the Revolution’s commemorations, the political faction is once again hoping to stoke the flames of a people’s uprising to dethrone their ally-turned-nemesis, Bongbong Marcos Jr.
The irony of the Duterte political dynasty co-opting the legacy of the People Power Revolution seems to be lost on this Davao-based clan. During those fateful days in February 1986, millions of Filipino took the streets calling for change and an end to a dictatorship that had plundered the country’s coffers, put to prison to to death thousands of activists and political rivals, and ruled the entire country as if it was their own fiefdom.
These attributes are exactly what we experienced during the six years under President Rodrigo Duterte. Under his reign, political activists and other dissidents were either killed extrajudicially or put in jail on trumped-up charges; massive corruption scandals like the Pharmally fiasco or the anomalies in the Frigate Acquisition Project were commonplace; while Duterte himself also fostered his own inner circle of cronies from the country’s economic and military elite to protect his hold on power.
The Duterte family should not be allowed to become the new faces of the People Power Revolution. They are no different from the Marcos family that were driven out of the Philippines during that eventful day 39 years ago this year; rather than stewards of the people’s uprising, the Dutertes are more akin to the type of political dynasty that should be targeted by such mass actions.
On this year’s commemoration for the 1986 Revolution, may we remember that EDSA People Power was not purely against the Marcoses – it was against government tyranny and corruption altogether: the exact traits that both the Marcoses and the Dutertes embody.