Dilawan: Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime - Vision vs Reality

In this episode we are going to dissect the vision that Ninoy had offered for the Philippines, and delve more  deeply into the early days of the post-EDSA regime to see how this vision was corrupted by the yellow forces.

Agapic Love

At the heart of the EDSA movement was Ninoy's Christ-like journey of self-transformation. His narrative opened a path whereby we could collectively transform our country from a nation of economic serfs within a semi-feudal society, to one in which individuals would be empowered to reach their full potential as part of a nurturing community.

The old republic was dominated by the uneven relationship between feudal lords and hapless serfs (between wealthy landowners and their tenant farmers), a co-dependent, patron-client relationship that regulated economic, social and political life.

Ruling clans owned, consumed, and extracted the resources of the land, including its labor. Serfs had no way of actualizing themselves as individuals. They had no personality. Their very existence was dependent on their lord’s (or amo), the haciendero, who also became the political bosses of their region.

The American Commonwealth era gave agency to these feudal lords, who controlled congress and the bureaucracy. This created a system to be known as booty capitalism and cacique democracy.

True agency and emancipation was nipped in the bud at the Treaty of Paris when America annexed the Philippine Islands from Spain. As a condition for the annexation, Spain made the US guarantee that all friar lands would be returned to the Catholic religious orders. 

During the Philippine war of independence, the leaders of the first republic in Asia emancipated the serfs by giving them ownership of the friar lands, which they had tilled in slave-like conditions under the ecclesiastical encomienda system. In return for rights to this land, taxes were remitted to the coffers of the Katipuneros fighting the Spaniards, and then the Americans. This is how the principales, or local elites, who led the revolution got the peasants on their side.

The US sought to legitimize its occupation of the Philippines by seeking to school us in the ways of democracy. It introduced representative government to Filipinos without first establishing responsible government by way of a professional bureaucracy, unlike the British colonies in the region, where the opposite was true.

The result was a cacique democracy and booty capitalism. Local elites gained access to national office and proceeded to offer appointments within the civil service as a form of political patronage and to use the national treasury to fund their entrepreneurial projects. 

Americans attempted to promote land reform to prevent another rebellion, but they had to pay a hefty price for the friar lands and found that the Spaniards had left a poor state of records, unlike what they subsequently found in Taiwan and Korea, former Japanese colonies. This made surveying and titling the lands in the country a costly affair.

It became much easier for the land registration system to be gamed by local elites that engaged in land grabbing and forging of titles.

This led to peasant insurgency movement in 1930s-50s. The Huks as they were called succeeded in gaining seats in the upper house after the war, but were blocked by Pres. Manuel Roxas from taking them. This drove them to the hills.

Under Pres. Magsaysay the suppression of this insurgency took place with help from the CIA. The surrender and arrest of Luis Taruc whom Ninoy had convinced to come down from the hills, was the end of that rebellion until the establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the 1960s. Ninoy of course became Magsaysay’s little president. 

His father-in-law Jose Cojuangco, Sr came to acquire the 6,500 hectare Hacienda Luisita and sugar mill owned by the Central Azucarera de Tarlac, through Ninoy, with a loan from the US underwritten by the Central Bank and GSIS in 1957. The previous owners sold it because of the Huk rebellion. Ninoy for a time helped to modernize it, and used it as a springboard to run for governor of Tarlac, and eventually for senator. 

Ninoy partook of the fat of the land, but supported progressive ideas in the senate. His suffering and ultimate sacrifice was seen as an agapic form of love by the yellow forces patterned after Christ. As the Scripture goes, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). 

In greek there are three words for love: 1) Eros - which means to become one with, through consumption, or consummation, where we get the modern connotation of erotic/sexual love, 2) Phileo (friendship) - is a reciprocal, two-way kind of love, some would say conditional love (I love you as you love me), and 3) Agape - self-less love, unconditional, the kind of love a parent has for a child, it is other centered, you help nurture and create them, it’s god-like in that sense.

Ninoy had demonstrated agapic love, negating himself, being oppressed, made weak, bereft of friends, property, stripped of rights and privileges as a member of the upper class. He was showing through this how we collectively could give birth to a new nation - in which everyone could partake of the fat of the land, like he did when he was at the top of the food chain.

FM for his part had offered the hope of a New Society - one where the old elites would be washed away, purged and start-over. But it soon became apparent that he was creating a new elite to combat the old, who centralized and partook of all the fat of the land themselves. It was the Roman republic - you were either in, or out. If you were out, then you had no rights, no property rights, no political rights, etc. But Marcos had reached a cul-de-sac with the new society. He saw Ninoy as his only worthy successor to carry the torch, but then August 21 happened.

Necropolitics 

The yellow ideology took Ninoy’s ultimate sacrifice as the core takeaway of his life. They likened it to Jesus’ crucifixion. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This was the start of necropolitics: the veneration of the dead, bestowing saint-like qualities to them as martyrs for the cause. Obviously, if you exalt that person into the Light, then the other side, which was “responsible” for his death, should be treated as belonging to the Dark-side. This dichotomy between Good and Evil, Light and Dark, continues to this day among dilawans.

But, Ninoy’s core message wasn’t one of binary opposition. It was one of active, participative collaboration. It was evident in his speeches. Here is the often quoted part of a speech he gave in LA before returning to the Philippines:

“I know for a fact, we cannot go back to the old society, where a few enjoy the fat of the land, and the many suffer. But today, under Martial Law, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are growing in numbers. That cannot be. The meaning of our struggle is to be able to return the freedom. First, you must return the freedom, so that all segments of our community, whether from the left or the right, will have the right to speak. And then in that open debate, in that clash of debate in the marketplace, we will produce the clash between the thesis and the antithesis, and we will have the synthesis for the Filipino people.”

Theories of change

From Ninoy’s perspective democracy is not a discourse seeking to destroy your opponent, or owning them, like what we have in today’s social media, but one of partnership. Why would I want to destroy you? I actually need you. You are my partner in better knowing what is to be done. Without you, I cannot correct my own biases in order to find a synthesis, in which both our views and ideas are reconciled and correct for the biases of the other.

I hope you are beginning to see how different a message this was, from the one that eventually gained ascendancy in the EDSA regime. You are either with us, or against us. You must repent of your sins, turn from your wicked ways, or be condemned. That was very different from Ninoy’s saying, that if Marcos was part of the problem, then he should be part of the solution. 

The isms of the age all promised to deliver the “end of history” the “final solution” through political and economic movements, to break down the structural barriers to human development.

The CPP followed a Marxist vision of material determinism - where the ultimate end of history would be a post-capitalist society where the proletariat or working class ruled. 

Adrian Cristobal called the New Society a revolution from the middle (although technically, it was from the right, but instead of a military takeover, it became a constitutional dictatorship). It sought to create a New Man for the New Society through externally imposed discipline (sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan). Ninoy’s approach was not from the top-down as imposed by the right, nor bottom-up as advocated by the left, but from the inside-out.

Ninoy had professed a belief in Christian Socialism, first espoused by the Enlightened Lutheran King of Denmark, who created a social contract to educate his citizens well to read the bible and provide a counter-weight to the nobility opposed to his reforms. In return, they would be more willing to be conscripted in the army. Denmark became a social democracy not through civil war or class conflict.

The British arrived at liberal democracy gradually, incrementally through the industrial revolution, in which human dignity worsened before getting better. The individual pursuit of self-interest, led to common good, as per Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Private vice, led to public good. Capitalism’s fruits eventually trickled down to the masses, after a long period.

In Denmark, liberal democracy came about through the Visible Boot of the state, with mass education of the peasantry, who were subsequently liberated from serfdom, and participated in higher value-added food processing. 

The idea of acquiring rights not through conflict or violent revolution, as per the French or British experience, but through a quiet revolution, through citizens becoming enlightened (Ninoy had sponsored a study now, pay later bill for college tuition as a senator). This was a human-capital centric development path.

Balik sa dati

This was the vision, but under Cory it would be undermined. The norms of neoliberal market capitalism with its faith in the Market, and the Invisible Hand, as the only path to economic nirvana, forced Cory to pledge to honor all borrowings entered into by Marcos’ govt - even the ones tainted with corruption, even for projects like the BNPP that was mothballed. This was the impersonal world of the vengeful god of the old testament. The law was the law. Contracts were sacrosanct - atonement was made through sacrifice.

The provisions of the 1987 constitution, notwithstanding, which said education should receive the highest allotment in the budget. Debt service took up the largest share of her budgets. Agrarian reform, which was made the center-piece program of her administration, was tainted by many scandals including the Garchitorena land scam involving a financier of her campaign based in Bicol. Landholdings were sold to the government at inflated prices. 

Things went back to the way they were before Marcos. Kamaganak, Inc and corruption, booty capitalism went on unabated. It almost came back with a vengeance. If Marcos had centralised it in the form of grand corruption, under Cory it became decentralized once again  down to every petty bureaucrat, whose rights were protected under the restoration of civil liberties.

She scapegoated Marcos, citing what her husband supposedly said that he would leave the nation in such a state, that it would take his successor a decade to recover. But the decision to honor all debts was not forced on her govt. They were under its control, as pointed out by her first socio-economic minister, Solita Monsod. Poland had sought and obtained absolution from the same. “Ask and ye shall receive,” as the beatitudes go.

By promising it in the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill, in Washington, she painted herself in a corner. There was no way of backing away or retracting it. 

This was the first broken promise of the EDSA regime. Later when a group of peasants massed at Mendiola to press for true agrarian reform, the police under Gen. Alfredo Lim fired at them, claiming they had fired first. This became known as the Mendiola Massacre and was the second broken promise. 

In seeking to preserve the EDSA regime against Marcos loyalist forces, the Cory government welcomed with open arms the old political bosses of the Commonwealth republic and created new ones. Happy days were here again.

What was the point of EDSA?

From the agapic love of the benevolent state, the EDSA regime turned to phileo love of transactional neoliberalism and traditional politics. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Through the years the EDSA commemorations observed the re-enactment of kapit-bisig, the bayanihan spirit of working together, but this would increasingly ring hollow, like “an empty gong, or a clanging bell”.

She spoke with “the tongues of angels” in the US Congress, but those words bound her to a loveless relationship with the Filipino people. Not in the sense of a lack of adulation, which she had (Cory magic) but an inability to make possible the development of her people, like a parent would for a child to mature fully. The agapic love that her husband had envisioned, was no longer available. Instead a generation of Filipinos were weighed down, saddled with the heavy yolk of the bond market.

And so we were condemned to wander through the wilderness, just like the children of Israel, in Exodus who were hesitant to enter the Promised Land, because it was occupied by giants. In the biblical account, 12 scouts were sent by Moses on a reconnaissance mission to spy on the Canaanites. Ten of them came back reporting that it was filled with giants and would be difficult, if not impossible to conquer. Only Joshua and Caleb believed that the Israelites could take the land from them. The people sided with the ten, and so the Lord made them wander the desert until that generation died out, except Joshua and Caleb would lead their children into the Promised Land. 

The EDSA regime self-edited itself when approached by its creditors. Instead of seeking a state of grace through debt forgiveness, it accepted its obligations under the law. The mindset of scarcity took hold.

It took 50 years for universal access to tertiary education to be enacted and funded from the time Ninoy had first sponsored it in the 60s. Fifty years. That’s an entire generation.

Many will say there was an absence of political will during the early post-EDSA period. There was definitely self-editing censorship going-on. People had subscribed to a certain notion about how the world works, and how it should be.

There was heuristically, no difference between the way Imelda justified whitewashing the streets of Tondo for the Pope’s visit in the pursuit of the Beautiful, with the way Cory prioritized debt servicing to make our chart of accounts more presentable to the high priests of the bond market, as part of an aversion to the problem of moral hazard.

In both instances, they sought to project an image to the outside world, to alter its perception of us as a people, more importantly of the way we govern ourselves. These images were based on an ideal that each of them had. Neither of them were bad people. They were simply seduced by an idea, or tricked into behaving a certain way, by playing a part.

Those ideals were cultural blinkers that prevented them from acting any differently. It limited their ability to engage in rational decision-making, in the end. In the case of Imelda, the beautification of the surroundings didn’t hide the farce from being exposed in the media to the world. In the case of Cory, the short-term gain from maintaining good credit status with debt issuers, locked the country into long-term pain.

Corrupted vision

This cultural blinker found its echo in Benigno S Aquino III when as a candidate for president in 2009, he promised to the Makati Business Club that there would be “no new taxes” under his government. He was channeling his mother’s speech before the US Congress 30 years earlier,  where she said that we would honor all our obligations and live within our means. 

This locked his government into not being able to deliver much needed infrastructure investments. The first time with Cory was a tragedy, the second time with Noynoy was farce. He did not need to give that undertaking. The business community themselves were crying out for infrastructure, because they saw bottlenecks as a threat to their productivity.

This was the pitfall that the EDSA regime fell into, that ultimately led to its collapse as a credible narrative for our people to keep believing in. It was seduced by the gospel of neoliberalism. The fact that we had to wait so long for our fortunes to start to reverse, and that we were locked into this dynamic from the earliest days of the regime, meant that the lenses that it offered for us to see the world had to be rejected. 

The original vision that Ninoy had of freedom to participate in the marketplace of ideas was blocked off by the return of the warlords and dynastic politicians. The benevolent state and mindset of abundance that he promised became a parasitic one which observed the law of scarcity in the way that it preyed on potential investors and hapless citizens.

As that vision got further and further corrupted, the EDSA regime would suffer several backlashes - one from the left with the arrival of Erap Estrada, another from within, with the apostasy of Gloria Arroyo, and most recently the right with the ascendancy of Rodrigo Duterte. In each of these instances, the yellow forces’ response was to resurrect EDSA, by valorizing its opposition to these administrations, scapegoating them, and perpetually seeking to undermine them, while ignoring the will of the people who have been seeking alternatives to the yellow orthodoxy all these years.

Next time, I’d like to delve deeper into this ideology of the Market, and its pursuit of modernity through good governance, because faith in these ideals is what prevented the EDSA regime from developing a transformative model for development, that was uniquely our own.