BY NELSON CAB ROBLES
THE EDSA revolution in 1986 didn’t live up to its name. It was the biggest hoax in Philippine history if I may say so.
I was there on the first day, Feb. 21, 1986, joining a crowd of a hundred that swelled to thousands a few hours later.
There was a feeling of euphoria. People from all walks of life came, eagerly waiting for a miracle. Parents brought kids along with them, some were toddlers who looked mesmerized by their surroundings. Nobody showed up to claim one was in command. People were even wondering who was who? Everything was “played by ear.”
There were “Samaritans” who started sharing sandwiches and packed juices to the crowd. There were nuns and priests scattered around, the former with beads of rosaries on one hand and flowers on the other hand reaching out to soldiers mobilizing tanks. Some offered their bunch of flowers as a symbol of peace.
I made a long walk with friends and strangers alike starting from Cubao stretching up to Camp Aguinaldo on the left and Camp Crame on the right.
Admittedly I was also euphoric. I considered myself then a Marcos basher, with a strong belief that Ferdinand Marcos was evil reincarnated.
It had been like that for years, believing the late Cory Aquino would soon redeem us from extreme poverty and misery, bring us to a promised land, a land closed to a Shangri-La at least, if not heavenly one. Cory made a hell of a promise. Some were too good to be true.
Year after year, nothing significant happened to make us proud Filipinos. The saint failed to save us from deliverance. Strangely a series of natural calamities and various man-made catastrophes occurred under her term, but worst under her son. There those acts of God? Or perhaps a punishment for putting someone in a pedestal, worshipping her like a living saint the way we treated Mother Teresa of Calcutta. What made them distinctly different though from the other was that Mother Theresa was treated with compassion and reverence.
Cory then was also treated with utmost respect at the start of her presidency. She was phenomenal. Citizens around the world would send her congratulatory remarks as the first Asian leader that toppled a dictator who had been ruling the country for almost 20 years.
Her administration did everything to exorcise the former occupant in Malacañang. She did the cleansing herself by creating a task force so powerful it could claim anything she believed owned by Marcos.
Other than cleansing, she was obsessed to put the whole Marcos clan in shame. She swore before her grave that no one from the Marcos bloodline could make a political comeback.
She created a scenario that the former First Lady, Madam Imelda Marcos, had a fetish for shoes, branded and locally made ones from Marikina. It was as if to own a hundred or a thousand pairs of shoes was an unforgivable crime against humanity.
Not contented with her vengeful act, through collaboration with the international media, she made it a point that the name Marcos was synonymous to thievery. True enough, the couple’s name was included in the Guinness Book of World Records, encrypted as the biggest thieves, husband and wife team.
With all these hullabaloos, not a single suit was won by the Cory government. On the contrary, Marcos and his heirs were exonerated after a US court declared them not guilty of almost all the suits filed against them by Cory.
God must have loved the Marcos heirs too much for they are back, politically alive and kicking. Is it payback time? (roblesnelson339@yahoo.com.ph/PN)
