Salonga: The Edsa revolution
and 20 years of people power

"We must live by the love of what we may never see."

These were the words of former senator Jovito R. Salonga, in an interview with Sheila Coronel in 1984. In the article, Keeper of the Faith, Coronel noted that perhaps the most remarkable thing about the man is his sense of wonderment and his faith in God and man.  

Now 85, Salonga still speaks along similar lines. Yesterday, as he addressed a crowd of law students at the University of the Philippines, Salonga shared his reflections on the 1986 People Power revolt and his hopes for the country.

"Edsa 1 did not just happen in a vacuum. We must view it in the context of past events especially the declaration of Martial law and the events that culminated in what we now call Edsa 1," Salonga, who played a key role in the restoration of democracy in the Philippines, said.   

He remembered the eve of September 22, 1972, when he, lying in sick bed,  recovering from the injuries he incurred from the Plaza Miranda bombing in August 21, received the news that Martial law has been declared by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

He recounted the events during the dark years of the Marcos rule; a dictatorship that eventually ended in a peaceful, bloodless revolution. On the morning of February 25, 1986, he and hundreds of opposition leaders and followers were gathered in the Kalayaan Hall of Club Filipino. Salonga recalled the "heady, contagious smell of victory" in the room, as Mrs. Corazon Aquino was poised to take her oath of office as the country’s new President. 

"Those were glorious days, those were days of soaring hopes and expectations," he said.

With the new government under Aquino, Salonga was appointed chair of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, an agency tasked to recover the ill-gotten wealth of Marcos and his cronies.

In 1987, Salonga topped the senatorial elections and became Senate president. Under his leadership, the Senate rejected the military bases agreement, formally ending the presence of foreign armed forces in the country after more than four hundred years.

He ran for president in 1992 but lost. He then founded several organizations, among them Kilosbayan, where he is now chair emeritus, and Bantay Katarungan, where he remains an advisor and coordinator.

For Salonga, Edsa 1 was merely the beginning of our struggle. "Without the follow through of the people in terms of careful planning, organizing, building institutions rather than personalities, what happened during the four days of People Power and its towering hopes of expectation (where) there will be no more corruption, no more palakasan, more jobs for the unemployed especially for the slum dweller, a more progressive economy, a better system of justice for the forgotten people, these would be no more unless we follow them up, these would be no more with our usual ningas cogon mentality."   

Listen to Salonga’s lecture on People Power and the lessons the youth may draw from Edsa in this podcast.

Length: 00:34:08
File size: 23.4 MB