EDSA on my mind

APOLOGIES. I was actually absent from the historic four days of the EDSA uprising. In 1985, I had been invited to spend a year as a journalist-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where my husband would be a visiting professor for the academic year. 

It was also the inaugural year of CNN’s  24-7 news, a historic media development born in Atlanta, Georgia. CNN kept me and my family glued to what was happening at home and gave us the close shots the sounds and scenes that showed the unfolding of the People Power revolution on EDSA. That and numerous long-distance phone calls with friends and colleagues in Manila connected us to four days of history. 

In the months that followed, my husband, an historian, and I were invited to numerous forums in the US to speak on the political events in the country. We saw how the events in the Philippines had held the world in thrall. We would be congratulated by strangers, hailed by taxi drivers who had seen of the toppling of a long-standing dictatorship on TV, sharing openly in its joy and excitement. 

The journalist during the Marcos years worked in media companies under the control and influence of Marcoses, their friends and their families. I wrote a twice-weekly column for Bulletin Today where I and other women writers, and Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, editor of Panorama magazine, dared to write critically of the administration. We were described as the women “journalists who had more “balls” than our male colleagues. All of us, including Letty were eased out of our jobs. Menzi himself told me I had to be let go, but that it would be temporary, until things cooled down. This was shortly before Benigno Aquino Jr. was shot dead on the tarmac of the international airport in August 1983. He was coming down from the plane under military escort. The video of the shooting was shown on TV by military generals later that day. 

A few months later, I was asked to write my column and work as associate editor for a new publication, Veritas NewsWeekly, which was founded by a group of businessmen and managers, headed by Jaime V. Ongpin, who identified themselves and linked the media venture to the influential prelate, Jaime Cardinal Sin, hoping his mantle would protect the publication from government interference or worse. 

It was part of the alternative press, a clutch of publications, described also as the “mosquito press” as it buzzed with news not to be found in the mainstream. I thought these presented journalism at its best, advocating for political reform based on news values of accuracy and fairness. 

Veritas reported on developments in the provinces, sharing the stories of those outside Metro Manila, projecting the broad landscape of experience during the period, reflecting the people’s desire for change and the fullness of freedom. 

I will always look to that chapter of my life with gratitude, practicing journalism with an objective of restoring democracy. 

Even then, I knew that it was only the first step. The work of democracy is difficult. To make it work, Filipinos would have to grow resilience of spirit and the dogged determination to overcome desperation. Building up citizenship may prove more difficult than toppling a dictatorship. We must learn that democracy can work only if citizens are engaged in their governance. And for this, a society aspiring for political reform must have venues in which individuals t can communicate with one another, hold a conversation despite not knowing one another. For this, they need a press.

Such a press is needed even without a political crisis. Citizenship involves more than just electing representatives. For people to choose their leaders well, they need to be knowledgeable and informed. The task of the news media includes the continuing education and learning of citizens so they can choose leaders well, leaders who will put the public interest above their own, politicians who will set aside personal gain for the larger good and benefit of the many. 

EDSA showed us what a united community can achieve. It may have been limited but it showed Filipinos the power gained from working on common goals and shared objectives. After forty years, Filipinos must continue the work of civic engagement, discussing issues, learning from one another, and collaborating on the project of nation-building. 

EDSA and People Power did not happen out ot the blue. There was a process, a learning that recognized that we as a people must learn to work together, overcoming our differences so as to achieve a collective goal. To grow our democracy, we must learn to create the common ground that unites us and makes us strong.