By Philip M. Lustre Jr.
(N.B. My bragging right as journalist is that I was at the right time and at the right place. I saw the EDSA Revolution in the making and in its conclusion. I was there at that particular juncture of history. I knew it; I saw it; I wrote it. This is for the Filipino youth. Please care to read.)
THE rebel forces were winning when the clock struck 12 midnight of Tuesday, February 25, 1986. An overwhelming majority of the officer corps of the Armed Forces of the Philippines had pledged support to the rebel forces led by Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel V. Ramos.
The Cory Aquino-led forces had likewise settled the political issues with the JPE-FVR faction in the military. They were committed to Mrs. Aquino, as they expressed belief that she was the legitimate winner in the Feb. 7, 1986 “snap” presidential elections.
Cory took her oath of office as the new president on the fourth day of the EDSA Revolution at Club Filipino. It was originally scheduled at 8 am, but because of organizational snafus, it took place a little later at about 10:30 am.
JPE and FVR took a time off from Camp Crame and motored to Club Filipino to attend Cory’s oathtaking. Opposition leaders likewise trooped to Club Filipino to witness a historic event that ended the Marcos dictatorship and ushered the restoration of democracy.
The Philippines had its “longest day” on Feb. 25, 1986, as it started the day with virtually no president, had two presidents by noon, and one president before midnight.
By midnight of Feb. 25, dictator Ferdinand Marcos was rendered inutile, as top officials – military and civilian – deserted him. His orders and Gen. Fabian Ver’s went unheeded too.
By that time, he was a king without a kingdom. By 11 am, Cory Aquino was installed as president, while Marcos, by noon, took his oath, giving the country with two presidents.
By 10 pm, Marcos fled, leaving Cory as the only president. The late American journalist Kate Webb, who was then writing for the Agence France Presse, used that imagery in an AFP news dispatch datelined Manila.
(Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was reputedly the first to use the phrase “the longest day.” Inspecting the fortifications, which Nazi Germany on the France’s beaches fronting the English Channel, correctly predicted that they the Axis Powers and the Allied Forces would have their hands full should the Allied forces land in any of those beaches. True enough, the Allied Forces made their first beachhead in Normandy on June 6, 1944, marking “the longest day” in the annals of World War II.)
At around 8 am and shortly before JPE and FVR left for Club Filipino, Enrile received a call from Marcos in Camp Crame asking him on how to settle the issue.
Taking his last chance, Marcos, who had established notoriety as an astute and cunning politician, was a picture of beggar going for crumbs. He asked Enrile to establish a “provisional government” (or junta), which Marcos would head as honorary president.
Proposing that JPE would run the show in that proposed provisional government, Marcos said he intended to fade away and retire as a statesman in what could be described as a graceful exit.
JPE did not bite and told him that he and FVR had committed the presidency to Cory Aquino. Begging for crumbs, Marcos asked if he could stay in the country to which JPE replied he could.
But when Marcos asked if Gen. Ver could stay with him here, JPE said: “That is something that I do not know.” End of conversation.
As a journalist, I covered this event. I had the privilege to witness this game-changer. I took a cab from my residence in Sampaloc and arrived at Club Filipino shortly before 8 am.
It was a balmy day, but the road was quiet because few people were on the streets. I surmised that the offices in Ortigas did not open because of the ongoing political dynamics at EDSA.
By that time, Club Filipino was already teeming with people, mostly opposition leaders.
On my way to the hall, where Cory was slated to take her oath, scores of soldiers with their guns festooned with yellow ribbons and countersigns saying they belonged to the rebel forces secured the area.
I asked a soldier about their presence and he told me that they were under Col. Greg Honasan and that their leader sent them to provide security.
They were very alert as their eyes kept on moving for any infiltration, danger or sabotage coming from the Marcos loyalist forces.
Cory’s oathtaking did not start as scheduled. Many snafus happened. They did not have a copy of the Bible, a requirement for the oathtaking of a Christian public servant.
Someone from the opposition volunteered to get a copy from his house in the adjacent posh Greenhills Subdivision.
Nobody had a text of the Cory oath. Human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag hurriedly composed one.
Everybody looked anxious as they waited for what they could view as the culmination of the EDSA Revolution.
By that time, very few people called it the “EDSA Revolution.” For the journalists, - local and foreign – who covered the event, it was simply a “revolt,” a “rebellion,” or a “breakaway” of a faction of the military from Marcos.
Other journalists used the phrase “military revolt,” or “military rebellion,” but it all depended on their judgment.
Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos used the phrase “people power” to refer to the people’s united action to protect the military rebels, but that is another story.
I asked why it had to be called EDSA Revolution, when it was simply a rebellion. On the side of Club Filipino’s main hall, former senator and vice president Emmanuel Pelaez explained to me that rebellion and revolution are one and the same.
“When it’s won, it’s revolution, hijo, but when it’s lost, it’s rebellion,” he told me emphatically. Obviously, victors have their way of defining their own victory.
No, he did not give me a lecture on political law, of which Maning Pelaez, a lawyer, was conceded an authority.
Incidentally, I also covered the exchanges of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Feb. 7, 1986 “snap” presidential elections shortly before it was held.
Pelaez virtually lectured on the Supreme Court justices led by Chief Justice Ramon Aquino on political law and swayed them to give the green light for its holding.
On the basis of his mastery of political law, Pelaez almost single-handed convinced the SC that no legal impediment could stop the “snap” presidential elections.
The cramp social hall allowed the use of two long tables. The first table, which was slightly elevated, was reserved for the top guns – Cory Aquino, Doy Laurel, JPE, and FVR. The next table ran parallel to the first table. But it was not elevated.
It was for the lesser gods, so to say, like opposition members of parliament (we had the unicameral Batasang Pambansa during the Marcos era), a sprinkling of other opposition leaders, human rights lawyers, former senators, and others.
Shortly before the oathtaking, I witnessed then Manila Member of Parliament Lito Puyat berating then Supreme Court Justice Antonio Barredo, a notorious pro-Marcos jurist, who voted to favor Marcos and his martial law regime in a number of test cases.
Apparently drunk at late morning, Lito Puyat, who had a reputation for being a hard-drinking solon, stood in front of Barredo and said: “Pu...inang iyan. Bakit nandito iyan?”
Fellow jurist Claudio Teehankee saved the day for Barredo, who immediately whispered something to him. Barredo hurriedly left. He was never seen again during the entire duration of the oathtaking.
Sometime in January, 2006, I saw Puyat in the wake of the mother of a common friend and I asked him about the incident. Puyat readily admitted that his blood pressure rose to a higher level in anger upon seeing Barredo there.
Puyat, ncknamed "Spar," admitted he threw expletives on him because of the way Barredo propped up Marcos and his martial law regime.
“Then, when the ship was sinking, he was one of the first rats to jump ship and join the new government,” Puyat said.
Puyat remained unrepentant until his death, believing that what he did during that day was morally correct and tenable.
By the way, Barredo never joined the Cory government; he was never invited.
When Cory reorganized the Supreme Court after its justices were required to resign en masse immediately after EDSA Revolution, Barredo was not reappointed.
Teehankee, whom Marcos disliked for his independence of mind, was named the Chief Justice.
Doy Laurel took his oath as vice president before Justice Vicente Abad Santos. Moments later, Cory Aquino took her oath before Teehankee. Ninoy Aquino’s mother, Dona Aurora, stood beside her during the oathtaking.
It was a little amusing that lesser mortals like Ernie Maceda stood at Cory’s back during the oathtaking. The iconic picture oathtaking showed Maceda, with his glistening forehead quite visible, near the presidential armpit.
In a display of irreverence and bravura, I once said in a commentary that Maceda was within "the sniffing distance of the icon of democracy."
Cory Aquino’s message was essentially about national reconciliation, which did not create traction to the group of Enrile, Honasan, and other players. But the post-EDSA revolution story is another story.
As her first official move as president, Cory Aquino issued Executive Order No. 1, naming Doy Laurel as concurrent prime minister and vice president, JPE as defense minister, and FVR as chief of staff of the renamed New Armed Forces of the Philippines.
An amusing incident happened, when Cory clumsily returned FVR’s salute. She did not know yet to give a snappy salute.
Afterwards, Cory told reporters that she named JPE as defense minister because no one among the opposition leaders would earn the acceptance and respect of the military except him.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand Marcos held his oath oathtaking at the Malacanang social hall. A few hundreds of Marcos loyalists, some wearing slippers and rubber shoes, were allowed entry to the social hall to serve as audience to the oathtaking ceremony that started at 11:30 am.
Since the rebel forces had gained control of the state-owned TV-4, Marcos' oathtaking ceremony was covered live by Channels 2, 9, and 13.
Marcos was about to take his oath of office when the live coverage went dead. A military sharpshooter shot the transmitter of the three stations at the Broadcast City in Quezon City.
Marcos oathtaking looked like a funeral rite for a deceased person. The Marcoses looked glum and sad.
There was no upbeat feeling among a handful of Marcos Cabinet members and even Marcos loyalists, who kept on shouting “Marcos pa rin.”
Arturo Tolentino, Marcos running mate in the snap elections, did not attend. He later lamely said he was caught in a traffic jam. Prime Minister Cesar Virata was nowhere to be seen.
(Later, Tolentino made a claim to the presidency since Marcos was out. He took his “oath of office” as “acting president” in the comical July 6, 1986 “occupation” of Manila Hotel. When Cory gave the order to flush out the military rebels in the first ever putsch against the fledgling Cory government, Turing Tolentino, a veteran lawmaker, who had topped the senatorial elections twice, an expert of international law who authored several books on that subject, a reputed parliamentarian, who excelled in debates, and a son of Manila who rose to national prominence because of his reputed brilliance, was among the first to flee. From the upper floors, which the Marcos loyalists controlled, Tolentino held on to the staircase of the Manila Hotel’s fire exit to go down and rode in a waiting car with tinted glasses. He only stopped claiming the presidency after the Filipino people approved the 1987 Constitution in the February 7, 1987 national plebiscite.)
More than half of his Cabinet members were absent. Information Minister Greg Cendana, who was lavish in his treatment of the members of the crony press that covered Marcos, disappeared too after the oathtaking ceremony and left the reporters without food to eat.
The Malacanang reporters, hungry and angry, never forgave Gregorio Cendana for that incident. Even after the EDSA Revolution, they kept on making fun of him. Gorio became the virtual pulutan in their drinking sprees.
Chief Justice Ramon Aquino administered Marcos oathtaking. But this was not without snippets of humor.
Fearful that he would take his oath without any administering authority (it was customary for the SC chief justice to administer the oath of office of every president), Marcos ordered his security men to fetch CJ Aquino and wife Carolina Grino-Aquino from their Manila residence in the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1986.
Upon Marcos’s prodding, Ramon and Carolina stayed overnight and slept at the Palace to assure his availability.
Sensing that the oathtaking was a big fiasco, that hordes of angry people would storm Malacanang as Marcos held on to power, CJ Aquino and wife disappeared too by lunchtime.
They did not take their lunch, but instead went as far as the Singian Clinic and detoured to Arlegui to hail a taxi cab. Yes, folks, they went home riding on a taxi cab.
The succeeding events were anticlimatic. Knowing that he did not have the control of the presidency, Marcos got busy preparing to flee.
He contacted the US Embassy and then US Ambassador to the Philippines, Stephen Bosworth, who a helicopter which took the Marcoses to Clark Air Base. From Clark, they took a US plane to go to Hawaii where he spent the last days of his life as a sick man and a political has-been.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer headline the following day: MARCOS FLEES, in bold capital letters.
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