Edsa revolution how many years

Discontent was building solidarity: Sympathizers from all walks of life would link arms and protest an increasingly unpopular and thoroughly objectionable administration. Student organizations, spearheaded by the National Union of Students of the Philippines and with the support of workers and members of the urban poor, crafted a manifesto in preparation for the SONA; a permit to rally was applied for, and some 20, people trooped to Congress.

They were met, however, by a cadre of uniformed men in battle gear garlanding the streets, patrolling entry points. But when Marcos and his wife Imelda exited the halls of Congress, demonstrators—spurred on by agitators and harassed by uniformed personnel—rushed at them, throwing bottles and placards and stones as they entered their limousine. The security force pushed back at the demonstrators. The mob was broken up by the police with batons; students were beaten with truncheons.

Two accounts give opposing views of the January 26 protest. Jose F. Lacaba himself took a blow to his waist from a policeman. Her account of the violence outside was taken from Manila Police District chief Colonel Gerardo Tamayo: one cop lost four teeth, another received ten stitches on his head, another sustained a nail in his knee.

In the streets that radiated from the Palace, more and more protesters were gathering, marching toward the breach in the gates; as security tried to break up the mobs, doors would open to the rallyists, second-floor windows opened revealing strangers serving as frantic look-outs. Rallyists retaliated with force. They started fires and destroyed property; a fire truck was rammed into the Palace gates.

At Mendiola, students armed with bamboo sticks faced off against a battalion wielding heavy artillery. Demonstrators were killed—one year-old student, performing in a mock trial of a Marcos effigy, was shot in the head—several others wounded in clashes that ran late into the night.

Marcos, in his diaries, wrote about the siege of his Palace:. The crowd was finally dispersed by tear gas grenades. A year after the First Quarter Storm, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, UP students, supported by faculty members and non-academic personnel, staged a sympathy strike in support of Pasang Masda , an organization of jeepney drivers that protested gas price hikes.

The students occupied the Diliman campus and blockaded its main roads through the use of a new weapon of protest: the human barricade. The Philippine Constabulary went to UP and dismantled the barricades; three students died in the violence that ensued. The demonstrations in UP Diliman ended only after the school administration accepted some of the demands of the students. The military siege was put to a halt following a recommendation made by university president Salvador Lopez to President Marcos.

As students, faculty members, workers, and peasants alike—and sometimes, together—launched new radical organisations and engaged in concerted collective campaigns during the course of the decade. A year following the First Quarter Storm, the political situation in Manila and throughout the country was at a fever pitch.

Roxas would hold President Marcos responsible for the attack:. I have only one message to leaders, followers and the electorate: Nothing will deter the LP nor dampen its determination to win the mandate of the people this election.

We shall continue to fight for the right of our citizenry. I am grateful to the Almighty for those of us who were fortunate to have been spared. Widely considered the most blatant assault on free speech and guaranteed democratic rights at the time, many quarters believed it to be masterminded by Marcos himself, which led to increased opposition to his administration. The Marcos years, characterized by the Machiavellian exercise of power preservation, fomented political unrest: Alleged graft and corruption by the administration and her cronies would worsten the disparity of wealth and grow the gap between the extremely wealthy and the very poor.

This heightened sense of control meant the suppression of civil liberties and before long, President Ferdinand Marcos found himself addressing the public, justifying the need for power to be vested solely in his hands. On the afternoon of September 21, , the last protest before the declaration of Martial Law was held in Plaza Miranda.

Sponsored by Concerned Christians for Civil Liberties, the demonstration was attended by a crowd of 30, people from different sectors—civic, religious, labor, student, and activist. The September 23, declaration of Martial Law planted the seeds of discontent that would make dissent and revolution necessary—even vital—to the restoration of democracy. Urban protest did not vanish entirely, even under Martial Law. On the day before the Interim Batasang Pambansa elections, for example, residents of Metro Manila organized a show of support for the incarcerated ex-Senator Ninoy Aquino, who was the leader of the opposition candidates: the noise barrage held on April 6, , would become one of the most famous protests of the era.

At p. A period of relative quiet followed; but in , the assassination of the foremost critic of the Marcos dictatorship—the man who was among those first arrested in the declaration of Martial Law—revived the nation out of inaction. Fifteen minutes after Ninoy Aquino returned to the country after three years of exile in the United States, he was dead on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport.

The unprecedented funeral set the tone for the protest movement that was to evolve. In subsequent rallies and varied mass actions, demonstrators, linking arms and bearing no weapons, bravely faced the U. The indignation and the grief, fuelling the resurgence of democratic expression, spread across all sectors—the country had once again found a single banner from which it could unite and struggle, against the innumerable abuses of the Marcos regime. Protest demonstrations continued into the following year, with more than held between October and February The murder of Ninoy Aquino during the Marcos regime would set in motion the beginning of the revolution that would reclaim the country from the dictatorship.

Marcos would struggle to maintain his control over the people, even instigating charades of democracy: On February 7, , nationwide snap elections were held for the presidency and the newly restored position of vice president. The contenders were the tandem of Marcos and Arturo M. Aquino had proven her charismatic and emblematic sway over the people just months prior; the Cory Aquino for President Movement had ensured for her 1.

However, as the votes were tallied, the Commission on Elections Comelec numbers showed Marcos and Tolentino the winners, a result made official by the Batasang Pambansa. Within two weeks of the snap elections, multitudes of demonstrators would fill the vast expanse of EDSA calling for—and achieving—the peaceful ouster of a dictator.

The Revolution of sparked a selfless sense of community in multitudes, rarely seen in such demonstrations. When rumors spread of a potential teargas attack, residents near camps Crame and Aguinaldo scrambled to provide protesters with wet handkerchiefs and towels. When the Malolos Congress—which ushered in the birth of the First Philippine Republic—was ratified, among the witnesses was a delegation of Filipino soldiers who had marched away from a Manila that they had won but which was barred to them: Spain refused to hand over the capital and stronghold to the Filipinos who had survived revolutions to overthrow years of rule and had since forged uneasy alliances with Americans to secure victory.

There, witnessing the foundation of a true modern state for Filipinos, was an army that had won back the country, to no recognition of two warring conquerors. But we Filipinos have known to take confidently to the streets our devotions and our yearnings, our furies. On streets we gather to be heard, to be seen, by the powers that be.

We gather in thoroughfares to welcome home triumphant athletes and venerated celebrities; we sanctify the celebrity, trailing after roving stages. We honor the dead, close down arteries of the city to march after a coffin inching to its final resting place.

We topple a dictator, even at the cost of our lives; we rise up when the state threatens to turn its back on its citizens. We rouse, we march, we rally. We stand upon the very streets we lament on the day-to-day—via debates, consciously made or otherwise, pitting inconvenience against development—when we need the Republic to listen; the volume of people we scorn in our daily tribulations become brothers- and sisters-in-arms when a goal must be won for the citizenry.

The commonplace, the purely pragmatic—at its most fundamental: A line, be it straight or weaving, that conveys us from one point to another—becomes a stage upon which revolutions spark. For on and along roads—first cleared paths through foliage and terra, and then lined dirt and then gravel, and then asphalt and steel and concrete—shooting through our archipelago, Filipinos gather—collective movements within all these centuries creating a true cartography of Philippine democracy.

Learn more about the Philippine government, its structure, how government works and the people behind it. A History of the Philippine Political Protest. Citizens continue to march to EDSA as individuals or as organized groups with their own safety rope, provisions and banners. A Filipino street demonstration calling for the United States to give the Philippines its independence. Circa early s. Photo from Museo ni Manuel L. Quezon via indiohistorian. Thirty-two Lapiang Malaya members were killed, as against one PC soldier.

Photo from the Philippines Free Press Magazine. This People Power Revolution surprised and inspired anti-authoritarian activists around the world. Ferdinand Marcos had been president of the Philippines since After declaring martial law in , he suspended and eventually rewrote the Philippine constitution, curtailed civil liberties, and concentrated power in the executive branch and among his closest allies.

Marcos had tens of thousands of opponents arrested and thousands tortured, killed, or disappeared. The Sunday Express headline from September 24, shortly after Marcos declared martial law.

For two decades, Filipinos lived under authoritarian rule while Marcos and his allies enriched themselves through ownership of Philippine press and industry outlets and through the siphoning of funds from U. For many years, however, much of the world—the U.

By the mids, however, foreign policy calculations had shifted against Marcos in crucial ways. Senator Benigno Aquino in an interview with Pat Robertson before his assassination in Many times before, Marcos had tipped the electoral balances in his favor, through a rewriting of laws, outright violence, and other forms of manipulation and intimidation.

Much of the Philippine Left decided to boycott the election, fearful that participation would only serve to further legitimize the regime. Just as many feared, Marcos claimed victory in the election.

This time, though, Filipinos refused to accept this lie. Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Archbishop of Manila, called upon Filipinos to support the peaceful protests. Cardinal Jaime Sin pictured in Marcos ordered the military to repress the mass action.

However, a faction of military officers refused to clamp down on the protestors and chose instead to defect. This group included soldiers who had grown frustrated with corruption in the military and the Marcos regime and had earlier formed the Reform the Armed Forces Movement RAM.

When Marcos ordered the military to arrest detractors, Cardinal Sin called upon the people to shield them. The Catholic radio organ, Radio Veritas , became a major control center for protest communications during the People Power movement. On the evening of February 25, the U. As Corazon Aquino was sworn in as President, Filipinos were hailed around the world as an example of peaceful revolution and the restoration of democracy.

Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as the 11th president of the Philippines on February 25, at Sampaguita Hall. The road ahead would not be so simple, however. In the years since , the legacy of the People Power Revolution has remained uncertain. Aquino faced several coup attempts during her time in power, many of them led by the very same RAM that had helped facilitate her rise to power. The agricultural and economic reform that many Filipinos hoped for in a post-Marcos world did not come.

Peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines dissolved and leftists continued to be maligned, attacked, and hunted. Many Filipinos expressed nostalgia for the very dictator that had been overthrown. And there have been ongoing projects of historical revisionism in the Philippines that sanitized the Marcos years.

Bongbong refused to concede and, to this day, continues his legal challenges to the election. The most concerning outcome of the Philippine elections, however, was the election of Rodrigo Duterte as president.