First word
WHILE doing a cursory review of the four decades of the EDSA People Power Revolution since 1986, it struck me in a flash that all the pivotal figures in the Earth-shaking events transition have already left the scene.
President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., around whom the daily news and developments revolved, has left us permanently and is now interred in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
President Corazon Aquino, who was arguably the single biggest beneficiary of the event, reigned literally over a nation in darkness, but is not responsible for the darkness that now hovers over the land.
Jaime Cardinal Sin, who roused the faithful to go to EDSA, has been shorn of his pulpit, and will preach and sin no more.
Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE), who started the commotion by holing up in his foxhole in Camp Aguinaldo, exited the scene the moment he clocked 102 years in this century.
Fidel Ramos, the tag team partner of JPE, went on to win the presidency, but he failed in his bid for an unconstitutional term extension.
An authentic living survivor of the EDSA revolt is Col. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, who truly can lay claim to hatching the EDSA mutiny and two other coup attempts against President Cory Aquino. Gringo has gone on to make a second career for himself as a politician, having won a term in the Senate. He will be plotting his next bid for elective office.
Also living and active, but largely unmentioned in the credits, is the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was active from first to last in the unfolding of People Power. Starting with the snap election in 1986, the agency did its usual work of influencing the course of events. It orchestrated and staged the walkout of the computer tabulators at the Philippine International Convention Center to make it appear that President Marcos was out to steal the election.
Namfrel, the National Movement for Free Election, was a CIA-funded operation from the beginning.
Namfrel was supposed to come up with the numbers to show that Aquino won the snap election, but was not able to come up with credible numbers and vote tallies to back the Aquino-Laurel victory.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. can do the Filipino nation a great service by requesting the US government to declassify its records of influencing the 1986 snap election.
His frequent and wasteful travels to the US can do a service by taking the time to request the declassification.
The full truth and the real election figures must be told.
The US government declassified its records of interference in elections in Iran and Chile, which toppled Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, and Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1973.
US President Donald Trump cannot refuse Marcos Jr. this necessary correction of the false records. Marcos Jr. must realize that this is elementary decency and doing justice to the much maligned and slandered President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. “Justice” in the words of the great American political philosopher John Rawls philosopher “is fairness.”
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