Farewell, Mother of Democracy

Now that the foremost modern-day icon of our democracy has passed away and in sojourn towards eternal peace, I now remember how Madame Corazon C. Aquino, plain housewife who in a matter of moments became singular bastion of democracy in our country, unifying a devastated people to yearn and ultimately strive for the freedom negated for more than two decades of repressive and ineffectual dictatorship under the late Philippine president Ferdinand E. Marcos.

I was merely in highschool years when the EDSA Revolution of 1986 occurred and despite the youngest of mind, I remember seeing her on television, then just a lean and unassuming woman, speaking for votes towards radical changes for our country, in that year’s snap presidential elections.

She spoke like a gentle mother overseeing her suffering children and truth to be told, as indeed history reminds us, as history forever endears her to all of us, she became ultimately the mother of modern-day democracy that we are all having privilege of. And to this, we must all be thankful and offer Madame Cory Aquino the highest of salutations.

I remember now also, that when in 1999, the eve of a new millennium spurred every media outfit to recollect on a decade that was, outlining the highlights of a century that saw two gargantuan world wars, the rise of new social ills such as terrorism and global frauds, epidemics, world-shaking political assassinations, newfound glories  and modern-day revolutions, I had for one took a keen observation on CNN’s graphical graffiti of events that unfolded and was so distraught that the EDSA Revolution of 1986 was not as much as put into the proper perspective as was other events of the decade, like say the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Chinese people uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I reckoned that the People Power Revolution and Madame Cory Aquino for that matter, as a bastion of modern-day world democracy, the TIME’s Person of the Year for 1986, should have gained more focus and deserved more retelling than most of the events of the 20th century, as collated by the CNN news people.

In my mind, the EDSA Revolution of 1986 had brought forth and opened up opportunities for many nations of the world in those times towards the achievement of more palpable freedom and democracy, affirming in fact that a bloodless revolution like that in the Philippines could in fact be possible, and that it augured in an entirely new mindset for the entire political world, that authority of the state and governance need not be as merciless and unreasonable as was in past decades or centuries, that a new wind has finally come, where authority should indeed emanate purely from the people it seeks to govern, and that people in authority should not take possession of power when popular opinion comes to a point that it should be taken away and changed hands.

We could not point out to any evidential matter or a direct correlation of the events unfolding after EDSA Revolution in 1986, but it wouldn’t take much of a genius to note that prior to 1986, a street mass protest should be in no way to become an effectual scheme of disowning a rogue government, they always had to be military or forceful in means and methods.

But after the People Power had gained such surprising success, bringing down what could have been an immovable force in Ferdinand Marcos through mass protest in the streets, without any escalating warfare, and thereon had gained worldwide exposure, being such a phenomenon not really happening in years beforehand.

No one would admit that the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Chinese people finally braving tanks in Tiananmen Square also in 1989, was heavily influenced by the People Power Revolution in 1986. But I felt so intensely that they were.

Bringing forth a new wind of democracy throughout the world, a new era of freedom and democracy not seen ever in previous history, that at least now, the New World Order is much more acceptable and tolerable than the past Cold War Era and of course much much more appreciated than the repressive colonial years when Europe devastated the whole new territories, from Latin America and throughout Asia and Africa though economic exploitation and political enslavement.

Now we could say, that Madame Corazon C. Aquino—- and the People Power Revolution, had single-handedly reversed the Domino Effect Theory, where instead of the spread of communism that had been feared before, the EDSA Revolution of 1986 had spurred in another kind of domino effect, where one by one, socialist states had gone to the streets, from East Germany, to Ukraine and Belarus, to Georgia and China, they finally embraced the harboring embrace of democracy and of freedom.