EDSA: The real telenovela

Posted on | February 23, 2010 | No Comments

Photo from Flickr’s CreativeCommons page of Princesse_Laya.

I’ve almost stopped counting if for how long, but this week we Filipinos once again celebrate the then famous EDSA Revolution anniversary. It was decades ago when our mothers and fathers (and other family members) together with the nuns, priest and rebel soldiers held hands, marched to EDSA, and prayed there in unison; they stopped the mighty and intimidating government tanks head on with nothing but flowers, rosaries and bibles; some of them hugged the fierce and bullet-clad soldiers who defected through divine intercession; and all of which shed neither one blood nor life in the process. In the end we all made history. That year, the world witnessed how we Filipinos declared that enough is enough and that we despise the Marcos dictatorship; that as we sing the hastily composed yet fitting APO song, Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo, we vowed never to once again allow such mockery of our freedom. What an uplifting sight and feeling it was then. But where are we now?

The sad truth is, we now find ourselves almost back to square one once again, sans the dictatorship. While most of us pompously say, “but we now have democracy”, it is the same democracy that although we cherish it, is the same thing that make us oblivious or uncaring of what is actually being done to us as a nation. I don’t know if my observation is right, but whether we like it or not, it seems that we have so much belief (false) in the power of EDSA that most of us have this thinking that at anytime we want to we can just go back to the same symbolic place and do the same thing all over again – just like our never ending, often times senseless, favorite telenovelas. Isn’t that just exhausting, moreso futile?

So today, or until the end of this week, as most of us eagerly reminisce those eventful yet bloodless days of the EDSA Revolution, let us not forget that those countries who looked up to us as one united Filipino nation, who after 20 years of dictatorship finally stood up against the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos, are probably still watching if where we will be going from here. So the challenge now is for us to do our share, let’s do our own little sacrifices because until we start doing so, we might find ourselves again under the same situation as we were 20 plus years ago. And let us also put in our minds that after this week comes a much bigger task for each one of us – the May 2010 elections. It’s my dream, that I hope will become a reality, that this time we should vote more wisely with the goal that never again we will go back to EDSA to oust a president (nor any other political leader) but to instead celebrate that a real victory – that is, we have truly become one.

***

Twitter shots:

*Isn’t it an irony that the place that’s synonymous to hope and change is the same place where one will find reckless drivers, corrupt traffic enforcers and undisciplined and ignorant pedestrians?

*Don’t we find it disappointing that those people who played key roles in the EDSA Revolution are the same people who now contribute to the chaotic political scene?

*I will only believe that those people flocking to the EDSA Revolution anniversary really mean change if the moment everyone has left the place it will be trash-free.

***

Photo credit:

Princesse_Laya

Mood: 3/10 Honks! (not an avid fan of the EDSA celebrations)

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Marcus Can Blog

If you don't like it, blame daddy. If you like it, well, that's by me – Marcus.

EDSA: The real telenovela

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