EXACTLY 33 years ago this week, the so-called 1986 Edsa Revolution that catapulted the housewife, Mrs. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, to power remains today not only a highway of horrendous traffic but a long avenue of questions, regrets, economic opportunism and a source of hatred, vengeance and disunity among Filipinos.
Historians Salvador Escalante and J. Augustus Y. de la Paz of the Truth and Justice Foundation, asked:
If it was a genuine revolution, where are the radical changes that it should have set in place?
If it was popular, why were the beneficiaries so few?
If it was all-Filipino, why was there American intervention?
If it was for Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino (the slain senator), how valid a cause was he?
If it was meant to install his wife, Cory Aquino, to the presidency, was it worth it?
And why has life become much harder and politics even more corrupt after the so-called People Power uprising supposedly restored democracy?
Not only that. In the post-Edsa years, five presidents who succeeded President Marcos—Mrs. Aquino, her son Benigno III and the three between them: Presidents Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—spent more than P35 trillion in accumulated national budgets, compared to President Marcos’s total budget in 20 years of only P486.42 billion, and yet the country remains at the bottom of the five founders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The four others—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore—are now acknowledged newly industrialized and progressive countries.
Two best-selling books, Greed & Betrayal, published in 2000, and A Country Imperiled-Tragic Lessons of a Distorted History, published in 2011 by Amazon, one of the world’s biggest publishing houses, and both authored by this writer, distinctly provided the answers.
On March 15, 1986, President Aquino, without prior consultation with Vice President Salvador Laurel, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and other key participants of the Edsa Revolution, created a Special Cabinet Committee (SCC) to decide whether the new government would operate outside the 1973 Constitution.
The prime objective was to determine whether the 1973 Constitution would be abolished or not.
The SCC was composed of the late Minister of Justice Neptali Gonzales as chairman and members of parliament (MPs) Luis Villafuerte and Antonio Cuenco, then-Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo and Laurel himself, as members.
Gonzales proposed the abolition of the Constitution and the proclamation of a Revolutionary Government under a Freedom Constitution.
Enrile strongly opposed the idea and argued that preserving the existing Constitution would ensure political stability.
Laurel likewise objected to the abolition, as he pointed out that the Gonzales proposal would result in a dictatorial government and would exist beyond the ambit of judicial review.
United Nationalist Democratic Organization (Unido) MPs supported Laurel and Enrile’s observations and told Mrs. Aquino that there was no need to abolish the parliament because there was a new majority, which was ready to support the new administration.
Based on the minutes of a meeting recorded by lawyers Avelino V. Cruz and Minerva Reyes, the clear consensus was that the parliament would give the President emergency powers through a proclamation so that she could move on smoothly to discharge her power effectively along the lines enunciated in Gonzales’s draft of a Freedom Constitution.
As planned, the parliament stays and reconvenes on May 12, 1986, to adopt the proclamation of emergency powers. At the same time, it would annul the proclamation of President Marcos and Vice President Arturo Tolentino and declare Corazon C. Aquino and Salvador H. Laurel as the duly elected president and vice president, respectively.
The new government would be properly inaugurated and begin to operate under the existing legal framework, subject to the provisions of the Emergency Powers Proclamation under the Freedom Constitution. The Emergency Powers Proclamation would include a complete timetable for full transition to normalcy, including the adoption of a new Constitution and the holding of elections under it.
Accordingly, lawyer Avelino Cruz, representing Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo, lawyer Minerva Reyes and Deputy Justice Minister Renato Puno, representing the late Justice Minister Neptali Gonzales, drafted the fast-track plan.
The plan, however, failed to materialize, and was never heard of again.
Malacañang secretly hatched another plan and suddenly executed it without the knowledge of Laurel, Enrile, the rebel officers, as well as the majority of the parliament.
“It was political treachery of the highest order,” Laurel said, adding that a new power group had quietly taken over Malacañang.
Earlier, Laurel and Enrile, with the full knowledge of Mrs. Aquino, had been meeting with the Parliament members, with the help of former Prime Minister Cesar Virata, former Parliament Speaker Nicanor Yniguez, Minority Floor Leader Jose B. Laurel Jr. and all the Unido MPs.
They were able to obtain the commitment of 132 members, a clear majority in the parliament, with more members willing to join the bandwagon.
Recalling the incident, Laurel said: “We had agreed that the new majority would annul the proclamation of Marcos and Tolentino, that Cory and myself would instead be proclaimed, after which I would be formally installed as prime minister. The new majority likewise assured me that they would support the entire legislative program to be presented by the Aquino administration.”
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.