i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

TWO AT EDSA
‘When the wheels of
history turn, you hardly
expect the world to
turn upside down’
ED LINGAO
DURING THE last
Edsa anniversary
celebrations, we
thought of having
a reporter find out
what the younger
generation knew of Edsa.
Some excerpts:
Question: What was Edsa ’86
about?
Answer: …it was a massacre,
right?
Question: What was Edsa ’86
about?
Answer: A strike?
Question: When did the 1986
Edsa revolution occur?
Answer: Sometime in 1989… Oh
no, it was in 1990.
The event that made a generation
so proud to be Filipino, made
us stand straighter when we heard
the national anthem, that one event
that defined us in the eyes of the
world, may as well have been,
for a different generation, another
episode of “Wow Mali!”—except
this was a lot funnier than anything
Joey de Leon could cook up. It
would have been hilarious had it
not been so sad.
What makes it so painful is the
fact that these interviewees were
not comedians or bums hanging
out at the neighborhood sari-sari
store. They were Metro Manila
college students from private
schools. These were the crème de
la crème. One shudders at what
the rest of the crop thinks.
I was among those massed at
Edsa in 1986, a dot among a couple
million other Filipinos. I was
still a junior at UP at the time, and I
had come with a few of my college
buddies. But we soon lost each
other in the crowd and I found
myself near some praying nuns.
That’s when Times
photographer
Pete Reyes snapped that photo
that would be the iconic image
of that one hot Sunday afternoon
in Ortigas when nothing mattered
more than standing still.
The expressions on the faces of
the nuns froze a precious moment
of terror and fright as the marines
started the engines of their LVTs,
those huge, boxlike amphibian
tanks. Everyone sit, someone shouted,
and everyone in front did. Some
rushed forward to put their hands
against the hot metal, only to feel
how frighteningly solid and heavy
eight tons of armor must be. The
marines gunned their engines, and
the exhaust pipes spewed black
against the sky. Suddenly, the tank
jerked forward, and the marine on
top of the tank begged everyone to
clear a path or be crushed under the
tracks. People were screaming and
crying. But the line stayed. The tank
jerked forward again, and we shut
our eyes and prayed that the driver
had children of his own. And still
the line stayed.
Nineteen years later, the line
was broken beyond repair. In fact
the line had changed so many
times that it was hard to recall
who stood with you then. Post
Edsa, Cory went one way, Enrile
went the other; the Marcoses came
back, not to be prosecuted, but to
Ed Lingao (in dark
glasses) faced the tanks
in Edsa 1. Above photo
shows him posing in
front of a tank while
covering the Iraq war.
be icons of the new young (“Aiii,
ang pogi- pogi ni Bongbong! [Ay,
Bongbong is so handsome!]”) or
fashion statements. Imelda was
allowed to be herself, which was
perhaps as good a punishment as
any. No one, whether coup plotter
or plunderer or human-rights abuser,
was sent to jail. Those rounded
up were the usual suspects—the
activists, the strikers, the eternally
discontent. It all sounds so trite,
yet it all sounds so true. Colors
changed so blindingly fast, and the
rainbow coalition soon saw former
street parliamentarians rubbing
elbows with some of the biggest
Marcos cronies. Ninoy’s Laban became
the LDP, which was soon led
by those who laughed in Ninoy’s
face a decade before. Later, the parliamentarians
would become the
cronies, and the dictator’s cronies
would act like persecuted activists.
When the wheels of history turn,
you hardly expect to see the world
turn upside down.
We were under no illusion
that the revolution was over
when Marcos left. But we never
thought that people would forget
EDSA. Sometimes it seems they
never even heard of it at all.
The author is a TV journalist who
covered the Iraq war and the conflict
in Mindanao. He is now head
of news operations of ABC-5.
30 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT