A Lifetime of EDSAs

BY Ed Lingao

THERE was a time when I would look back to the good old days and wonder where they’ve gone, when the air was clear and the issues more so, when the only colors you had to choose from were red, yellow or blue, and it didn’t take an Einstein to choose wisely. But that was 20 years ago, a generation for some, a lifetime for most.

Twenty years and a day after we knelt in front of the those tanks in EDSA, the same 37-ton tanks dug their tracks into the hot asphalt in front of me in Fort Bonifacio, their drab olive green painted over with the garish black, white and grey squares of urban camouflage. But they were the very same “tanks” (Well, they’re not really tanks. But “tank” is easier to remember than Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel or LVTP-5). As for the Marines we faced now—the uniforms were the same, and the aging rifles as well. But most of the young faces under the steel helmets were probably the sons of those we faced down in EDSA in 1986.

In 20 years, much, so much can change. And so much has remained the same.

The Marines were restive and restless as ever. The faces during the standoff at the Marine headquarters last February 26 were uncertain, young and confused, the confidence borne in war dissolving under the strain of conflicting orders in a time of peace.

Outside the gate of the Marine barracks, while soldiers teetered on the edge of a mutiny, a paradox developed. People Power, the marine colonel shouted, come protect your soldiers! And Imee Marcos came forth to the chain-link fence to offer her support, with aging street parliamentarian Tito Guingona not far behind, eyes smiling like headlights, face withered and scarred but the hair combed into an ever-present pompadour. Cory Aquino tried to join them, only to be turned back by a bigger crowd of policemen with riot shields. Irony of ironies—Marine Col. Ariel Querubin almost died in 1989 trying to overthrow Cory.

The ultimate irony
On a bigger stage, the former Marcos and Erap cronies, ousted in two People Power revolutions, joined forces with the left, the right, and the center to bring down President Gloria Macapa-gal Arroyo, who has her own team of leftists, rightists and centrists at her beck and call. There will always be something unsettling about watching a Marcos sing Bayan Ko, or listening to Arroyo extol the virtues of People Power, only to have her policemen crack heads of rallyists along EDSA. And then she ordered a raid on a newspaper and threatened the rest of the noisy pack.

That, for me, was the ultimate irony. My generation remembers the first EDSA, and the mosquito press; the reborn Manila Times and the fledgling Philippine Daily Inquirer. Those were the days when millions would rally for Ninoy in Luneta, but Tempo would banner the rallyist who was killed by lightning like it was a sign from God Almighty. Those were the days when we would look for scraps of news, real news, and Joe Burgos would go to jail countless times just to make sure we got it, and got it right.

I would remember Louie Beltran, my old journalism teacher in UP, who was absent most days of the week while he nursed the Inquirer through those uncertain days. We learned absolutely nothing from him in class, but perhaps we learned much more from him in the way he worked, and what he put out in print. And so, from my generation in UP came Lynda Jumilla and DJ Sta. Ana of ABS-CBN, Grace dela Peña of GMA-7, and myself in ABC-5. We emerged unsteadily from the throes of EDSA, uncertain but eager, idealistic and, both fortunately and unfortunately, a little more realistic about the way Filipinos are.

Back to the past
Almost all journalists I have spoken to, both from my generation and before it, agree on one thing—there is no excuse for bad journalism. There never was. But bad journalism is not an excuse, either, to shut down a newspaper and put a policeman in charge. There are enough laws, and more than enough courts, to rein in an abusive press. But for a week, maybe more, government tried to dictate to media what is journalism, and what is propaganda. In doing so, it only tried to dictate what it thought was good propaganda.

Government insists it only wants fair and balanced reporting, and for that, policemen were called in to impose their sense of fairness, balance, and objectivity. Perhaps government wants to impose state-owned Channel 4’s reporting as the immaculate standard of fairness and balance. It would have been laughable had it not been so tragic.

Twenty years to the day after EDSA, we are back where we started, with the tanks and the Marines and a standoff and the uncertainty of it all; only, the colors had starkly faded, the shadows had fallen on other faces, and the lines were irretrievably blurred. Alliances had been crossed and double-crossed so many times that politics had become a comic exercise in self-delusion.

The freedoms we won are still there, but now we dance on the brink; strangely, those we counted on in the first EDSA have found other roads to travel, and we ourselves have picked up other companions by the wayside. We slew the dragon that was Marcos, yet we now lie in bed with the offspring; we decapitated Erap, yet now we wear his jester’s hat like a crown; we put Gloria on a throne, only to have a persistent ringtone haunt us in our sleep.

For two decades we kept EDSA in our hearts, hauled out the veterans in February every year to hear, again and again, a tale a thousand times retold, when perhaps we would have been better off putting EDSA in our heads. n

Ed Lingao is Head of News Operations of ABC-5.  A veteran of the first Edsa uprising, he was the young man wearing large shades and seated behind two nuns in the most famous photograph that came out of the People Power revolt.

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