THE MOUNTAINEER

Edison L. Baddal
EDSA I and after (1)

The celebration of the 23rd anniversary of EDSA circa ’86 revived some personal memories of those four fateful days, February 22-25, when the earthshaking event took place. My reminiscences may not be as vivid as they used to be yet they are treasured eyewitness accounts of it aside from having crystallized pertinent conclusions according to perspectives, notably its aftermath.

As everybody knows, those days featured the stand-off between the vaunted Marcos military and renegade military breakaway group headed by the duo of Fidel Ramos and Enrile. The duo were holed up at Camp Aguinaldo then shielded by a hordes of people.

Prior to the event, Ramos and Enrile occupied the positions of Vice Chief of Staff of the AFP and Defense Minister respectively, in Marcos’ cabinet. The duo’s two- decade association with Marcos vis-à-vis EDSA I painted a poignant story of flawed loyalty and trust that got ruptured at the seams on EDSA I.

It also depicted a harmonious friendship that turned ironically turned sour and at once deadly. Nevertheless, strange and convoluted as its denouement like a fiction, the kaleidoscope of events that unfolded created staggering ramifications nationally and globally. For the country, the immense repercussions it impacted on several spectrums made it among the towering events and milestones in this damned nation’s checkered history.

As I recall now, Manila and its environs then were shrouded in uncertainty and people were gripped in utter fear and breathless angst while they awaited every single, subtle move between the two camps. Enrile and Ramos were stark raving mad at Marcos’ brazen attempts to wipe them out and were ready to face the Fabian Ver-led Marcos army in a suicidal stance.

But Divine Providence patently intervened when Marcos’ plan to bomb Camp Aquinaldo did not materialize as Gen. Sotelo, who was ordered to carry out the deadly mission, had a sudden change of heart when he saw the hordes of people massed around Camp Aguinaldo. He landed down to the camp and joined the rebels.

This turnaround started to turn the tide of battle predominantly against Marcos. Sotelo’s turnaround, though, was preceded by the courageous blocking of military tanks sent to crush the rebels by the hordes of people. From thereon,things began to turn inexorably helpless for Marcos when his final attempt to crush the rebels through sneak attacks under the cover of darkness by a battalion of marines was discovered by the multitude and the former beat a hasty retreat.

On February 25,1986,a pale, worn-out, spiritless and almost teary-eyed Marcos took his third oath of office as president in Malacanang in the morning at the same time that Cory Aquino was taking hers at Club Filipino, San Juan, Metro Manila. Political pundits opined that Marcos’ oath-taking was apocryphal as it was a last- ditch attempt to show to the world that he was still in control of the volatile situation then. Hence,it was just a ploy to cover up a planned secret exit from Malacanang in the evening. At 9 pm of February 25,1986, Marcos, his family and loyal cabal of officials were flown out of Malacanang by a US military plane and brought to Honolulu, Hawaii. He lived in virtual obscurity in Waikiki heights until his death in 1989.
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The peaceful culmination of the first EDSA people’s revolution convulsed the European socialist satellite countries within the USSR’s “iron curtain.” Peoples of these countries adapted the EDSA strategy with backing from the military. First satellite country to wriggle free from socialism was Poland in 1989. This was the apogee of a continuous protest movement spearheaded by Lech Walesa against General Haruzelski’s authoritarian and represseive regime. Poland’s example was followed by Albania and Bulgaria.

In Romania,however,hundreds of thousands were killed by the state security as communist leader Nicolae Ceaucescu decided to hold on to power even after the army joined the people in fighting his tyrannical rule. He ended up a crumpled heap of carcass when he was killed by a firing squad. Consequently,the Berlin wall crumbled thunderously to the ground in 1990 after a prolonged protest by democratic organizations there and reunited the peoples of East and west Germany once more. The USSR itself, the first socialist country to be set up in the world in 1917 and which existed for seven decades, crumbled as a communist nation in December, 1991. Meanwhile, Socialist leader Daniel Ortega was dislodged through an election in 1990 by his democratic challenger, Violeta Chamorro.