Edsa Revolution Quotes

In the aftermath of the Edsa Revolution, Thai protesters filled the streets of Bangkok. Another man stood before another tank at Tiananmen Square. The Berlin Wall fell, with Germany thanking the Philippines for showing them the way. Once upon a time, we were heroes.

The 1935 Philippine Constitution, with 7,828 words and punctuation marks, was finished in nine months; the 1973 Constitution, consisting of 13,671 words and punctuation marks, was deliberated in a span of two years. The Aquino Constitution, by comparison, was completed in a record time of only four months.

When President Aquino addressed the US Congress in 1986, she missed a historic opportunity to ask the American government to write off the $26.3 billion indebtedness that the Marcos regime bequeathed to her administration, as was the case of Poland, Egypt, and other economically distressed countries.

— I tell this story not as a record of history but to explain the role the Edsa Revolution played in my understanding of who I was. Edsa was not my revolution, but it gave me a story grander than the dragon-slayers of my fairy tales. It was one part myth, two parts magic, peopled by giants, all thunder and power and bright yellow hope. It was that woman—smiling, kindly eyed Corazon Aquino—who stayed in my mind’s eye at the ringing of the morning bell when the national anthem crackled through the school loudspeaker. The brave wore yellow in my imagination. Here was our manifest destiny writ large—land of the morning, pearl of the East, cradle of the brave, whose people pushed back the guns of a dictator with no more than a prayer and a song.