Saturday, February 25, 2012

YOU-RAM-SFP and the Unsung Heroes of EDSA 1986

Let the True People's Revolt smash the elites!
In 1989, at the height of a struggle against the corporatist administration of former president Corazon Aquino, few people trooped to Malacanang to express their support behind the beleaguered leader.  The soldiers composing the Young Officers' Union (YOU), the Revolutionaryong Alyansang Makabayan (RAM) and the Soldiers of the Filipino People (SFP) were out to get the regime who reportedly renege on its promises of change shortly after 1986. 


Street battles exploded in the streets near Malacanang, reminiscent of American troops battling it out with the Japanese Kempetai during World War two. Explosions rocked Malacanang as airplanes swooped down and bombed several places to smithereens. 1989 was an unforgettable and emotional juncture in Philippine history, as friends battled it out with friends, classmates with classmates, Mason with Mason. 


The societal fragmentation caused by the takeover of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan in the seat of power caused a very serious disorder in the system. Changes were not effected overnight simply because certain elements of the previous dispensation successfully embedded themselves near the center of power. The lack of a clear ideological framework doomed the 1986 event. There was no effort at running after counter-revolutionaries. There was no effort at smashing the traditional centers of power created after several years under martial rule. People who benefitted from the Marcos regime, and those who composed the propertied classes who tolerated the excesses of dictatorship were left unopposed and unpunished. They were left to use their ill-gotten wealth to undermine the policies and desires of the People for change, as reflected in the 1987 Constitution. 


These patriotic soldiers, led by YOU founder Diosdado Valeroso and now Senator Greg Honasan and General Danny Lim and others were slowly being marginalized. Their roles in the historic EDSA 1986 are being blurred and several civilian ideologues tried very hard to describe the 1986 phenomenon as something of a civilian action against an unjust regime. What it really was, was a culmination of several years of struggle led by the leaders of the masses who opposed tyrannical rule. 


1986 was supposed to be a year of change, a period where Filipinos of all shapes and sizes, of all ideological beliefs, of all skills and experience, were supposed to gather themselves and express the true will of the People. The subversion of this "will" was fairly evident, when malevolent societal forces tried to force their will unto a hastily discussed Charter. Like what happened in 1946, shortly after the war, the leaders of this country abandoned their avowed promises to the people, and when it was time to unite and forge a unified platform of government and a clear policy direction for the next succeeding years, they expressed their class preferences instead of minding the true will of the suffering masses.


Class domination became a recurring and permanent fixture in Philippine political history that it now remains as a veritable scourge in this country's development. What had happened during these past twenty six years were events showing inter-elite struggles for power. The opposing Elites use emotional manipulation to urge the middle classes and a fraction of the suffering masses to militate against the ruling elites, and when their time came to rule, these opposing elites immediately reverted to their original natures, a nature despicable and highly toxic to the interests of the Filipino masses.


What has been the culmination of the dreams of the patriotic soldiers who forgot their futures and threw their own lives away just for the sake of the suffering masses became some sort of a copyrighted script turned weapon by an elite whose interest is solely anchored on personal corporatist desires rather than the true desire to help a country recover from numerous catastrophes and disasters.


Where are those soldiers who sacrificed their lives and futures just to forge a true and genuine people's government? 


It is again, time for these patriotic elements to save democracy from utter destruction, caused by this misguided view of several elites that EDSA1986 is a hammer of the elite against their fellow elites.


The phenomenon that was EDSA has been transformed into a weapon of a segment of the elite either to perpetuate themselves to power or cause the downfall of an existing power. 


EDSA 1986 was never intended for the pleasures and whims of the elite. True EDSA is anti-elite, anti-cono, anti-Ilustrado.


Let the enlightened Indio unite as a class, and retake EDSA 1986 from the elites of this country and use this as a hammer to smash them to smithereens. 



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