The celebration for the 28th anniversary of EDSA People Power revolution will be low key according to Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma. Instead of holding it at EDSA where it was held traditionally, it will be held in Cebu province. The reason given was “because the province was the bulwark of the opposition to the dictatorship during the martial law regime” and “it was where Mrs. Corazon Aquino was staying when the military broke ranks from then President Ferdinand Marcos on February 22, 1986″.
Prior to this announcement, Coloma said the celebration will be held at the Malacanang grounds. He said it’s because they are being “mindful of the situation of the people” and are trying to avoid “creating a bigger problem on the traffic of EDSA”. Whatever the real reason for holding it far from the original venue, it seems this is the start of the end of an era for EDSA People Power celebrations and we cannot celebrate that enough.
A big mistake according to a growing number of Filipinos
While it’s all well and good that the annual extravaganza is slowly being put to rest, some say that the real reason could be is that Malacanang finally realizes that more and more people are questioning the relevance of the first People Power revolution. The fact that there was a need for a second and third People Power revolution in the succeeding years actually says a lot about the insignificance of the first. If I was working for the incumbent President, I would probably be worried too about holding the anniversary celebration at big venue like EDSA. It would be too obvious when only a handful of people show up for the event.
I mean, it’s hard for some to believe that the current government is “mindful” not to inconvenience the people – those whose opinions don’t really matter to them. As usual they are being inconsistent. Even at the start of the year, President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino already stressed that his New Year’s resolution would be to ignore his critics. But now his men are claiming to be “sensitive” about what the people might think of the chaos the anniversary celebration will create. In the past, they have never missed an opportunity to remind the Filipino people of how BS Aquino’s late mother, Cory supposedly “restored” democracy and freedom in 1986. I guess it’s time to accept that the propaganda is getting a little stale even for them.
The decision to tone down the EDSA celebration could also be an attempt by Malacanang to avoid receiving the wrath of Netizens who hold the view that the popular uprising was a big mistake. This happened to ABS-CBNnews.comwhen a post on their Facebook page asking how people remember Cory became something of a public relations disaster back in August 2013. The post generated a lot of response from angry Netizens with one poster receiving over a thousand “likes” when he referred to the 1986 People Power revolution as “the biggest mistake in Philippine history”.
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