PGMA's Statement during the 16th Anniversary of People Power I

21 February 2002

The spirit of EDSA I and II lives. But it has to be deepened and transformed, if it is to live on for generations to come.

People Power must be transformed into a force for nation building.

In 1986 and then in 2001, hundreds of thousands of our people trekked to EDSA and the "EDSAs" of our other cities. They poured their energies, they gave their time, they even risked their lives to topple the dictatorship, and then a corrupt government.

Sixteen years after EDSA I though, we still look with deep sadness at the plight of our poor, some of whom unfortunately, and understandably, have started to believe that EDSA hasn’t really mattered much for them.

There is now a new call to our people, to the country’s leaders who have kept alive the spirit of People Power.

It is not a call to summon again a remarkable courage to fight, just with prayers and flowers, a dictatorship and a corrupt regime. It is not a call for massing at EDSA and committing to stay there for days until an enemy of the people falls.

The People Power call of this decade to our people: Bear the heavier responsibility for building our nation, not just for four days, but day-in and day-out, for years, even for a generation.

If we could put our lives on the line in EDSA in 1986 and 2001, we can certainly sacrifice just a small part of our wealth, our energies, and our time for building a new Philippines. If we can tap even just one-hundredth of the tremendous energy and patriotism of EDSA I and II in the coming years, we can build a prosperous nation.

This new People Power, the real EDSA III, may not as dramatic as the past two EDSAs. There probably won’t be a date when this real EDSA will be commemorated. Its heroes will probably be anonymous. Its struggle can’t be undertaken in days, but in years, even in decades.

Its battlefield won’t be at EDSA nor in Mendiola, but in our country’s shanty areas, in the poorest farms of our country. Yes, even in Basilan where the ultimate enemy is not the Abu Sayyaf, but poverty. Its weapons won’t be protest placards and slogans, but essentially a passion to help our poor and to build a nation.

The enemy of this new People Power won’t be regimes. It will be poverty

The rich and the middle class demonstrated their patriotism at the two past EDSAs will require more of the rich and the middle class: for them to give their time, their energies and their resources. Even as they found numerous forms of toppling two regimes, they will find ways and means to help the poor.

The new EDSA’s enemy will also be ourselves.

It will require changing the culture of corruption in our country, in such thing as refusing to pay bribes for traffic violation, for getting a clearance from a government office, for some state contract. It will require our civil service to give up the culture of bribe-asking, and embrace an ethics of fervent public service.

It will require a real concern for capital to share more of their profits to their workers. It will require our unions to look with realism, their wage demands, and to view their factories, offices, and farms as the engines of national economy, whose productivity is essential for our country’s growth.

It will require our politicians to look at their positions not as posts for rent-seeking and ego-trips, but as opportunities to really serve the people. It will require the country’s violent Left to realize the historically proven senselessness of their communist dogma, and work to really help our poor, not just talk about the poor and use them for political agitation.

It will require looking at government not as something we ask benefits and dole-outs from, but a people’s state we should always be asking, How can we help it to do its job?

Tulungan ninyo ako sa pakikibakang ito.

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