It’s been 22 years

At about 6:30 in the morning of Saturday, Feb. 22, 1986 I was at the residence of Salvador and Celia Laurel. He was about to leave for Cebu, to join Cory Aquino in a protest rally that would promote civil disobedience and a call to boycott the products and services of crony firms. It was a form of protest that Cory-Doy supporters had decided in a meeting called about a week before in Makati, presided by Jaime V. Ongpin.

The canvass of votes in the snap elections called by Marcos himself on November 14, 1985 was clearly tainted. Comelec presided over cheating most vile, with hundreds of thousands of voters in Metro Manila disenfranchised due to voter list scrambling. Whole municipalities in Northern Luzon reported 100 percent votes for Marcos, and in Central Luzon, even in Cory and Ninoy’s home province, she lost by an avalanche of votes manufactured for Marcos. The canvassers of the National Computer Office walked out in disgust, yet the rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa proclaimed Marcos and Tolentino president and vice-president.

I was supposed to join Doy in Cebu, but he bade us to stay. Cryptically he whispered, just before he boarded the car that would bring him to the airport, that "something, anything could happen." Days before he had confidently told me that Marcos would not get away with the cheating. "Something is bound to happen. Don’t ask me for details, because I do not know the whole scenario unfolding," Laurel intimated.

At about noon that Saturday, rumors swirled. Minister Bobby Ongpin’s bodyguards had been withdrawn from him, reported my friend Gene Espina, who lived in the same upscale Makati village as Ongpin. Early evening, knowledgeable sources confirmed that Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile had holed up in Camp Aguinaldo, and that together with then AFP deputy chief of staff Fidel V. Ramos, he was to break away from the Marcos administration through a press conference.

Doy Laurel’s aide called my house from Cebu. He had instructions for me to move my family to some other house, because "you never know how these things will turn out."

Minutes later, a compadre called my wife to bundle up the kids and some clothes. He was going to move us elsewhere. "Elsewhere" turned out to be a house at Dasmariñas Village, occupied by the family of a multi-national company executive who welcomed us with open arms. At the time, we had a two-year old daughter and a six-month infant.

There were frantic calls made to Doy in Cebu, trying to know what really was happening, and what the end game would be. All we could gather was that Cory had been transferred to a "very safe sanctuary", and that Doy would fly in by private plane to Batangas the following day.

After a late breakfast Sunday, we decided to transfer to another "safe house," this time my compadre’s suburban residence in Parañaque. We had to move out from our own house because it was right across that of a Marcos minister. Not that the fellow was at all sinister, but you never could tell in those dangerous days.

Laurel came back via Calatagan, through the Punta Baluarte airstrip of the Zobels, and then motored to Manila. By late afternoon, he visited Enrile and Ramos, now moved to Camp Crame. The tide was turning. Hundreds of thousands had massed at Edsa from Santolan-Cubao in the northeast to the Ortigas junction in the southwest. On Monday, my wife allowed me to go to Edsa, seeing how futile it would be to keep me "safe.".

Monday evening Cory and Doy were supposed to take their oaths of office at Club Filipino. I was there, and already I spotted two "balimbings." They were members of the Batasang Pambansa who along with his rubber stamps proclaimed Marcos and Tolentino victors in the snap elections just a week or so ago. Now they were there, proclaiming themselves for Cory. Little did I realize at that particular time that this was going to be a sign of the reversal of what we thought would be "revolutionary" change in the aftermath of Marcos.

We were told that some minor hitches happened. Cory would not take her oath and instead, the ceremony would happen in the same place the following morning.

And so I reported at Club Filipino six-thirty the following Tuesday morning, the 25th of February, surprised that a few hundreds had already lined up the street that early.

By noon, the oaths were administered. A new day, a new dawn had begun.

It has been 22 years since. My eldest, who was born after Ninoy died, who was with us as we moved from one "safe" house to another during those tense moments of "revolt" has moved to the US of A, in search of greener pastures. Another is set to leave middle of this year.

What changes did Edsa bring to the nation?

As I survey the bitter landscape of governance most foul, and today’s leadership described by one of its cabinet members as "evil." I truly wonder.