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Philippine Star Article, 1/26/01

As I write this, it’s Sunday evening, and I’ve had my first decent night’s sleep in the last five frenzied days. Argee, who has had even less shut-eye than myself (but more media exposure, nyahaha), begged off from penning this installment of The Court’s weekly opinions, and I gladly grabbed at the opportunity. In fact, I would have resorted to physical coercion to say my piece on the phenomenon now known as People Power II (the sequel?) on the first week anniversary of the nation’s New Day.

While many of you may have observed the divergence of opinions between myself and my writing partner, few people know that Argee and I have markedly contrasting political beliefs. Indeed, our law office staff has been witness to numerous debates (read: shouting matches) on the subject, the last one being a figurative argument using the office’s sanitation as a metaphor:

Argee: Wouldn’t you prefer that I clean the entire office and not just the bathroom?
Honey: You cannot possibly clean the whole office at the same time. You have to start somewhere. The bathroom is the dirtiest area and I would be very happy if you cleaned it first.
Argee: But if the bathroom was clean and the rest of the office was dirty, you wouldn’t be happy, would you?
Honey: You’re impossibly impractical.
Argee: You’re impossibly myopic.
Honey: At least I can wear whatever color of clothes I want to. And I don’t need a ton of foundation to show up on camera.
Argee: At least I’m on television!
Honey: Communist!
Argee: Capitalist!
(Ashtrays and various pieces of office equipment start flying across the room)

At any rate, there was one thing we did agree upon: that the person mucking up the bathroom should be kicked off the porcelain throne. We were both at all the major demonstrations in Ayala, albeit in different anti-bathroom king camps, and we were both at EDSA II. But our tales of the last five days of the “text revolution” are strikingly dissimilar. Here’s my version (Argee will tell you all about his experiences once he gets his voice back):

Tuesday, 16 January 2001. I called in sick; I felt a fever coming on. But little did I know that the feverish debates of the impeachment trial on the opening of the second envelope would erupt into a historical avalanche of outrage.

When the votes became apparent and Senator Nene Pimentel resigned his position as Senate President, I broke my New Year’s resolution of refraining from obscene language and jumped out of bed. As a lawyer, I realized that the decision on the motion was obscenely unjustified: how could the impeachment court determine the relevance and materiality of evidence it had not yet seen? Furthermore, objections as to relevance and materiality of documentary evidence are only properly raised after the said evidence has been formally offered (at the end of the prosecution’s presentation of its testimonial evidence). The results of the voting smacked of political maneuvering, nothing less. Shame on the lawyers among the infamous eleven! Worst of all, a non-lawyer Senator-Judge had the temerity to pre-empt the highest judicial officer of the land (who has more knowledge of the law in the libag underneath the nail of his little finger than the said Senator could ever hope to acquire in his sorry lifetime of turncoatism) on a strictly procedural legal matter.

My first instinct was to reach for my cell phone and start texting invectives against the sheer iniquity of the proceedings, and to find out when the indignation rally would be. It turned out that most of my friends were similarly inclined, and text messages were flying left and right.

The 11:OO a.m. rally set the next day at the Senate seemed to be much too far in the future to properly vent our rage, but at 11:00 p.m., there seemed to be no other choice but to participate in the noise barrage and organize ourselves for the next day’s events. After I had talked with my dear sorority sister LP Susan Villanueva (one of the badges of shame we wear is the fact that a certain Senator Judge, who vilified another alumnus of the College of Law on her choice of career path, is also a member of the U.P. Law Portia Sorority), who assigned me the task of marshalling my batchmates, my kumare and law school classmate Rhia Punzalan-Carpio called me and suggested a more timely course of action: go to EDSA NOW.

So at 12 midnight, I sneaked out of the house (my household is a democratic place, but unfortunately my parental units do not share my political disposition), instructing the help to tell my maternal unit that I was spending the night at Rhia’s (my Mom trusts Rhia implicitly, but I guess she’ll be a little more cautious in the future, hee-hee). After picking up Rhia’s sister Rowena, I headed to Mandaluyong via Katipunan.

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The crowd that packed the street from La Vista to Ateneo was truly a sight. I had never seen so many indignant people in pajamas! The solidarity that infected the multitude of students and Katipunan residents was overwhelming, and the motorists plying the road enthusiastically contributed to the furor by honking their horns and giving the thumbs-down sign. For the first time, I was actually happy to be wading through snail-paced traffic, and by the looks on their faces and the smiles of unanimity from fellow drivers, it seemed that I wasn’t the only one.

With Rhia, Rowena, and another friend, Jason, we headed off to the EDSA shrine. By the time we got there at 1:30 a.m., there was already a thick crowd of people, several of whom I knew, similarly outraged at the actuations of the infamous eleven. Yet another friend, Garet, who had contacted us about the gathering, had been there from the beginning, when there were only 20 people in front of the shrine. But the 20 people soon multiplied into 20,000, and the 20,000 five-fold more, until parked cars and warm bodies barricaded EDSA and its surrounding streets. There was no leader, no program: just a singleness of purpose. By the time we called it a night at past 4:00 a.m., some semblance of order was in place with the installation of a sound system and a line-up of speakers from different organizations.

Wednesday, 17 January 2001. I was too wired to get any sleep. I had stayed glued to the television since we got to Rhia’s condo, still seething with disgust at the travesty the majority of the impeachment court had pulled on the Filipino people. The thinning crowd on EDSA left me somewhat dismayed: traffic was actually still passing through the area. Rhia had taken a sick leave: “I’m sick and tired of this President and the state the country is in,” so we headed back to EDSA at noon, hoping to add to crowd volume and wondering what would happen next.

Our motley crew had grown in number; there were about a dozen or so of us who trooped to EDSA that afternoon. The Thursday Club arrived later in the day in full force, including my friend Miles who is very much pregnant but wouldn’t let the fact that she’s due to deliver in two weeks stop her from adding her voice to the chorus of protests (thank you to the kind lady who lent her portable seat to Miles, who previously had to sit down on the pavement with the rest of us). My sister Mia (another escapee from our pro-administration household) and her friend Elpo later arrived to show their sympathy to the cause, even donating a box of donuts to our little group. The spontaneous uprising was now becoming more and more organized with each passing minute: the stage was now secured and cordoned off, and people had begun setting up tents in anticipation of the long haul ahead.

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Thursday, 18 January 2001. After the Mass of the previous day, we adjourned for the time being to rest and recuperate. Worried that the crowd would not sustain its volume in the wee hours of the morning, we decided to add our presence to the thinning throng at 2:00 a.m. By then, the Shrine was beginning to resemble Payatas dump with the garbage scattered all over the place. A group of resourceful Mommies had brought along brooms, dustpans, and garbage bags, and we set off to clean the area as best as we could. In less than an hour, with the help of several gallant volunteers (including a couple of street children and a cigarette vendor, who would’ve made more money plying his wares but instead wholeheartedly started scooping up garbage with one arm, the other still clutching his yosi box), the Shrine and Ortigas Avenue were spic and span. As a reward for our efforts, we were treated to the musical stylings of several bands, including True Faith, who took the stage at 5:30 in the morning. Later, I saw Argee for the first time in days --- on network television.

But life has to go on, even in the midst of a revolution, and I had a court date in Caloocan at 8:30 a.m. Sleepless and incoherent, I made my way North, a little disconcerted to see that very few people were still at the Shrine at 7:30 a.m. In court, I could hardly believe that outside EDSA, everything else still seemed to be unaffected by the goings-on in the streets. The whole world was exploding around us and here I was, entering my appearance for the defendant, “if your Honor please.”

I made my way home, hoping to get a few hours’ shut-eye, but text messages kept flooding in and rousing me from sleep. Our group had decided to return to EDSA earlier than expected, and, armed with candles, water, and a fresh surge of energy, my friend King and I met up with everyone else just in time for Cardinal Sin’s 5 o’clock Mass. The news of the day was that Ate Guy had defected: with Ate Vi and Ate Shawie already siding with the opposition, it looked like all the stars were falling from Erap’s firmament.

After dinner at KSP (where we got the chance to applaud Prosecutor Congressman Sergio Apostol), we headed back to join the growing crowd who were then being entertained with speeches and songs. This time around, it was comforting to see that there seemed to be no let-up in the number of people flocking to the streets. Young people of all ages, who seemed to have foregone the streets of Malate for the parliament of the streets, made up the bulk of the crowd. However, there was still a nagging tinge of concern that these efforts could not be sustained for a prolonged period of time, and Ernie Maceda’s snide remarks dismissing the gathering as short-lived were still in the back of our minds.

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Friday, 19 January 2001. After lunch, our original group took our usual places near the stairs leading up to the stage (a great vantage point, since we got to see first-hand various personalities before they took to the podium). From our point of view, we could see that the multitudes had multiplied overnight, and thousands more were expected to join in the march to Mendiola scheduled the next day.

At about 3:00 p.m., during the speech of a KMU leader, the stunning announcement was made that the AFP Chief of Staff, General Angelo Reyes, had withdrawn his support for President Estrada. The crowd let out a collective whoop of joy; people starting jumping around; confetti rained down from the fly-overs. But soon after, I couldn’t tell if the news was propaganda or not, especially since former Defense Secretary Rene de Villa was just a few feet away from us, wearing a grim look on his face. But when the names of the defectors, including those of Defense Secretary Orly Mercado and the Deputy Chief of Police, were announced, and they later trooped to the Shrine en masse, we felt that it was all over except for the shouting. Rhia observed that in People Power I, when the military defections were announced, people were more ecstatic. This time around, the reaction was a wee bit more jaded. My explanation for this is that we Filipinos already have a tried and tested formula for revolution: things were falling into place just as expected, albeit a little too fast, and too soon.

Jason, whom we unanimously designated to prepare our propaganda-material, almost missed the earth-shaking announcement in his haste to prepare his posters, which became instant conversation pieces: “Erap, you’re so KAKA” (from a Mommy: “Excuse me, what does kaka mean?”) “Erap, hate kita FOR LIFE,” and the various parodies of Erap movies sent to us by our friend Tiboy over the Net: “I see stupid people. Walking around like real people. But they don’t know that they’re stupid.” (from a bystander and our former law professor and private prosecutor Atty. Arno Sanidad: “Do you know how stupid he is? When they opened the second envelope, there was nothing inside.”) “Nothing Here (a play on Nottinghill, indicating the place between his ears),” and “My name is Band. Wrist Band. The Brain is Not Enough.”

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Saturday, 20 January 2001. We hung around until almost 5:00 a.m., waiting for the inevitable coup de grace, but the news declared that negotiations between the Erap camp and GMA’s transition team had bogged down. Rhia and I tried to catch up on much-needed sleep, but were precluded from doing so by her baby Nathan (who likes to wake up at unholy hours in the morning) and Cardinal Sin’s announcement that, at 12:00 noon, “the moment we have all been waiting for” would happen. The news was that the Supreme Court had declared the position of President vacant, under the principle salus populi est suprema lex, and that Chief Justice Davide would be swearing in Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the 14th President of the Republic.

A horde of protesters had trooped to Mendiola earlier that morning, but while our spirits were willing, our tired (I refuse to say aging) bodies were definitely not up to the multi-kilometer walk. The marchers had even passed Rhia’s Mandaluyong condo along Shaw but I was too exhausted to even hear their chants.

Since we had a few minutes to spare before noon, Rhia and I decided to treat ourselves to a much-deserved decent lunch at the Soup Kitchen in Megamall (and yes, Virginia, some people were actually shopping on this historical day). And it was there, at a couple of minutes before 12:00 in the afternoon, that we heard, over a portable AM radio, that President Estrada had announced his decision to vacate Malacańang. Quite an anti-climactic end to the months of protesting and the last few sleepless days both of us had gone through, but a sweet victory nonetheless.

We got to EDSA just in time to hear President Arroyo’s inaugural speech, after which it started raining junk food. Cupcakes, chips, biscuits, sandwiches, even fried chicken and pizza started flying in the air as the hundreds of thousands gathered in the area celebrated the triumph of the occasion. Dancing, singing, and unabashed revelry was the order of the day --- and everyone wore their broadest smiles as they savored the hard-earned fruits of their vigilance.

Later that evening, our little group of EDSA II veterans gathered again, toasting our efforts and each other, and wishing the best for the new government. But now that it’s all over, what the heck are we going to do with our weekdays from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m.?

Epilogue. Kidding aside, the EDSA II victory, sweet as it may have been, is no reason to slide back into complacency and let the ills of traditional politics beset our nation once again. It is heartening to see that the moving force that sustained the crowds, the youth, have acquitted themselves (or, should I say, ourselves) admirably, casting away the general notion that our societal concerns are limited to partying, texting, and personal gratification. What is noteworthy, as many have already observed, is that this time around, the revolution was founded on issues of morality and good governance, and not centered on any single personality (except of course the person to be ousted and his cohorts in the legislature). We were in EDSA, and in other rallying points across the nation, to regain the dignity and integrity our country has lost, and not to put any person in power --- that President GMA has assumed the post was but an incidental consequence, and she has no other person to be thankful to than God and the multitudes that filled the streets. We were in EDSA to protest the cancerous state of our political institutions, and to relay the deafening message that the Filipino people will no longer take anything detrimental to the nation’s general interests sitting down. Let’s not put our efforts in EDSA II to waste, as we did in EDSA I. While I wish the new administration all the best, I sincerely hope that we shall not see an EDSA III in our lifetimes, for that would mean that we didn’t take to heart the painful lessons this “text revolution” has taught us.