EDSA 1986 and the Philippine Left: The Subversion of the Subversives

Ka Popoy Lagman--a leading figure
in the anti-dictatorship struggle

Many have written about this, and this entry will try to present a newer perspective about this. Yes, EDSA 1986 should have been the culminating event of a nearly one decade and a half struggle of the Philippine Left Movement against the Marcos regime. Much have been said about the lost opportunity, particularly when the Philippine Left boycotted the snap elections and lost the initiative when it allowed the moderates to occupy that stretch of EDSA fronting the Camp Aguinaldo. Some even wrote that EDSA was practically snatched away from the Left and eventually, given on a silver platter, to the moderates who comprised the yellow army. 


Really now, EDSA would not have happened without the substantive contribution of the Philippine Left in terms of presenting an ideology as well as logistics. The Philippine Left gave two precious things to the movement preceding EDSA 1986---logistics and a guiding ideology. Those who were born after 1986 are clueless who Voltaire Garcia was or EDJOP or Macliing Dulag. They probably heard of Alex Boncayao but never read about his heroic exploits. 


Hundreds have sacrificed their lives and the futures of their families just so the present generation will be able to enjoy a modicum of freedom now. This freedom comes at a high price.  At least a generation sacrificed their futures just so this generation would be able to live in peace. 


Whenever we read about EDSA, we read in scant accounts, the sacrifices of members of the Philippine Left. What we never read was how a boy named Filemon Lagman lost a brother and a wife during the war against the Marcos dictatorship. We never read of how an Atenean named Edgar Jopson lost his life serving the masses. Or the stories of hundreds of Filipino intellectuals who were brutally hurt or killed or those who remain missing or those who remain incarcerated even after the "restoration" of democracy in these parts. 


We never heard or probably those who have the duty of teaching the present generation of these things decided not to, or hide these things from the eyes of this generation. 


IN all these twenty six years, we are fed with misinformation, that this person or that person was part of the "creative team" that engineered or planned EDSA 1986. We are now being made to believe that it was all the Aquinos, their kin, their relatives, their associates, and their throng of believers created EDSA 1986. 


Credit this to the subversion of the subversives---the conscious shift of the leading figures of the Philippine Left from total adherence to the correctness of the revolutionary path to the willing subversion of their principles in exchange for the moderate way. 


Credit this also to the unwillingness of the Party to recognize that things change, that these changes can be controlled using scientific laws and that change is always towards the attainment of a specific goal, that is ultimate revolutionary success.


The Philippine Left lost its most precious sons like it did during the 1896 Revolution, when unrevolutionary, un-scientific and un-Marxist-Leninist precepts were injected into the mainstream ideological framework.


The Philippine Left lost most of its sons and daughters who were made to believe that change can happen within the system--something unscientific and un-Marxist. Had these Leftist leaders hold on to the true Marxist-Leninist way, they would have prevented themselves from falling into the moderate trap.


The Philippine Left lost most of its sons when they abandoned and rejected their own process of understanding the Proletariat and reverted back to their bourgeois ways. 


The reversion from a revolutionary to a bourgeois is easy. The complete transformation of a bourgeois to a revolutionary is difficult and fraught with dangers. 


The Philippine Left lost its leadership in the people's movement because it consciously abandoned the focus of every revolutionary movement--that the reason for its existence lies in shaping and eventually unleashing the Power of the New Man.


The New Man is Socialist. The New Man is proletarian. The New Man rejects every form of bourgeois puppetry to the failed promises of capitalism.


What happened these past few years is the reverse---the revolutionary donning the bourgeois skin and rejecting the New Man altogether. 


It is time for the revolutionary to rediscover himself--be with the mnasses, be one with the masses, and be the masses. Then, seize opportunities and create or establish a society which will allow the emergence of the New Man.