THOUGHTS & IMPRESSIONS
ON THE FEBRUARY 25, 1986
EDSA PEOPLE POWER
First came the tanks, slowly piercing through the
heavy traffic of a human highway. Then came the choppers, buzzing over
the sea of humanity below. A picture of steel WARrmaments in a "coup de
grace" mission against their own kind. The prodigal few in contest with
the undivided many!
Obviously, the protagonists were men more akin with
the fatal steel. The only line demarcating them was the burning passion
from one side to preserve the status quo; the other side, the
vice-versa.
It was in this February 25, 1986 EDSA arena where
history witnessed and asked why men who wear the same uniform, who are
the vanguards of life itself, who belong to the same race and who kneel
in prayer before the same God, confronted each other by way of an almost
fratricidal campaign.
Like in any other human theater, when the contending
parties become obsessed with the bestial impulse of annihilating each
other, a "deux et machina" scene is a welcome interjection! The
inundating prayers from the mass of humanity before the factioned
combatants awakened them to forego the unwanted bloodbath. The thought
of sacrificing the innocent lives of their own sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, was in itself already
suicidal. Isn't it the first law of life is self preservation? And that
human congress in and out the highway is unmistakably their own! Those
men in uniform, undeniably after all, were still gentle husbands and
loving fathers of a civilised community.
(A clear historical antecedent to man's quest for
survival was his conquest against his lesser being - the lowly beast.
Man's victory over the beast is now a mere trophy enthroned in museums
where the dinosaur is but a precious relic of the past. Todate, the
conquest is man against man! For centuries man himself has drenched his
own earth with his own blood. Self-annihilation has been a futile
attempt to cultivate the finer seeds of civilisation. Violent
instruments of war: the bow and arrow, the gunpowder, the nuclear smoke,
never raised man onto greater human beingness. All these are but
manufactured weapons of man terrifying man. When a prayer, however,
which is a weapon handed down to man to be used contra himself, this
weapon transcends all what is bestial in him, elevating himself to
mature civility.)
The February 25, 1986 EDSA People Power was, in
itself, a revolution of man waged against himself. It was a revolution
centered to humanity where the cathartic change did not course itself
via violent means. This utopian dream was realised in the Philippines, a
geographical dot in the civilised world, a struggling third world nation
having championed the long lost cause of man prevailing over himself.
The parochial prayers of the Filipino people proved
as a silent shout to the whole world that the civility in man stood
supreme over his ignobleness. That the godness (spelled with a single
"o") in the Filipino prevailed over his malevolence - a gandhian triumph
over machiavellian ambitions!
The genuine hero of the February 25, 1986 People
Power is the powerful and encompassing pellet of peace triggered from
the inner sanctum of every Filipino - the President, the Soldier, the
Priest and the common Tao from all the four quarters of the Archipelago.
(1st Prize winning essay out of 54
entries Bicol regionwide in 1987. Also published in the "Philnabank
News", the corporate magazine of PNB.)
