EDSA REVOLUTION ON ITS THIRD DAY: MORAL CRISIS RESOLUTION

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

N. B.: Since the day the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution broke out, I did not have sufficient sleep. I slept three hours at the most. Chronicling EDSA Revolution was a backbreaking job. But it was fulfilling too, knowing that I occupied a front seat at that particular juncture in history. 

Later, I would regal friends, particularly post-EDSA journalists, with stories about the EDSA Revolution. To be the "bangka" (or narrator-in-chief) of those discussions brings enormous satisfaction for a journalist like me. 

Please care to read.

ALMOST everybody confronted the EDSA Revolution as a moral crisis of sort. Hundreds of thousands of citizens - rich and poor, young and old, men and women - went to EDSA to answer a long lingering urge that the oppressive Marcos dictatorship had to go.

They did it because their conscience told them to do so.

Those military officers, who were caught between their loyalty to dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the military rebels led by Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos, found themselves in a moral dilemma, as they were no longer fencesitters.

They grappled with their conscience and did what they had to do in the final day of reckoning . Even coup plotters, led by Col. Gregorio Honasan, realized that going against Marcos and his dictatorship was a moral issue.

The EDSA Revolution and its antecedents were no different from the situation when the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler plunged Germany into a war of attrition with major world powers.

Seeing the futility of the war and realizing that Hitler would not surrender despite losing men and resources, a coterie of well meaning civilian and military leaders took their chances and launched the July 20, 1944 coup.

Col. Klaus von Stauffenberg, a Catholic monarchist and upright military leader, followed what his conscience dictated and planted the bomb at Hitler's lair in Poland. 

Because Hitler survived the attack and their coup failed, Stauffenberg paid the supreme sacrifice, which was his life. But he never wavered until the end. There was no indication that he ever regretted it.

Although the third day of the EDSA Revolution fell on a Monday, many offices did not require their workers to report for work. 

But it was a day of final attack for the loyalist forces under Fabian Ver and Major-General Josephus Ramas, the Army commanding general, who was assigned by Ver to handle the dispersal operations against the masses of people who trooped to EDSA to protect the Enrile-Ramos faction.

Initially at 5 am, a composite group of soldiers and police personnel, led by Brig. Gen. Ruben Escarcha, went to disperse the crowd with teargas and truncheons along EDSA near Santolan but the winds changed its course and the teargas went to the law enforcers instead. 

At the end, they saw it fit to join the people.

Escarcha had to pick up the pieces, as Maj. Gen. Prospero Olivas Jr. and Brig. Gen. Alfredo Lim refused to follow the dictator's order to disperse the crowd.

Col. Braulio Balbas went to Camp Aguinaldo with a Philippine Marines contingent to launch mortar and rocket attacks on the early morning to Camp Crame, where the rebel forces were holed in. 

But he never carried his order to attack and instead produced tons of lies and alibis at every turn to Ver and Ramas just to delay any attack on the hapless sea of humanity that gathered on EDSA.

By lunchtime, an exasperated Ramas ordered Balbas and his contingent to return to Fort Bonifacio, as nothing had happened. 

Balbas could not countenance the idea of killing thousands of civilians, who were to be killed in the crossfire if ever he would carry out the order.

But what provided the turning point of the fateful military uprising was the decision of Col. Antonio Sotelo and his men not to use their helicopter gunships against Camp Crame and the massing civilians there.

Instead, they landed on parade grounds and defected to the rebel forces. 

Sotelo did it because it was the dictate of his conscience. It was a moral issue, which he resolved by not using their superior forces against the people. He did it because he felt he had to be "on the right side of history."

Being on the right side of history is always a ticklish question. No one, for sure, could say whether his decisions could launch him on what could be described the right side of history.

Even on its fundamental terms, staying on the right side of history is essentially grappling moral issues in the most honest way. 

It is answering the dictates of one's conscience; it is adhering to his set of moral values and personal convictions.

It is not having a perplexed conscience, but a working conscience that provides a functioning brake system to refrain from pursuing something that is essentially evil and immoral.

From day one, the loyalist camp had a myriad of chances to pulverize (please read: pulverize) the Enrile-Ramos forces either in Camp Aguinaldo or Camp Crame. But it did not happen.

Somehow, orders to disperse those throngs of humanity that gathered along EDSA and the other thoroughfares surrounding the two camps fell on deaf ears.

Without those dispersal operations, the planned attacks against the rebel forces did not materialize. Nothing would happen though.

We could see divine intervention for a prayerful nation like ours. 

But we do not lose sight of the fact that the men, who were supposed to carry out the orders to annihilate the rebel forces at the expense of the people, saw the light and listen to the dictates of their conscience. Nobody wanted to be known as "the butcher of EDSA."
This makes EDSA Revolution a model of quiet, bloodless, but effective uprising for the entire world to see and observe. This is our source of pride.

It was exactly on the third day of EDSA Revolution that the balance of power tilted to favor the rebel forces. Many military officers, tired of the excesses of the Marcos regime and the favoritism and corrupt ways in the defense and military establishment, defected to the rebel forces.

To neutralize any orders to attack Camp Crame, two jet planes, manned by pilots who had defected to the rebel camp, fired six rockets that injured at least ten persons and caused damages to Malacanang.

Several helicopter gunships, now with the rebel forces, disabled other helicopters at Nichols to stop further any loyalist attacks. 

It showed that the rebel camp had air power, while the loyalist forces did not have it anymore. By twilight, Ramos had to announce that the rebel forces had 75 percent of the entire Armed Forces.

Also, the political issues were resolved on the third day. 

In their meeting, Cory Aquino, Enrile and Ramos agreed that Cory would be installed as president. 

No, the EDSA Revolution would not give rise to any military junta, although the canceled coup, led by Col. Gregorio Honasan, stipulated that a seven-man joint civilian-military junta, to be headed by Cory, would be created to replace the Marcos dictatorship.

Also, it was agreed that Cory would take her oath as president the following day, February 25, at a neutral place, which was Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, and not in Camp Crame, which was earlier proposed.

The culmination of the EDSA Revolution was about to happen.