[EDITORIAL] The song ‘Magkaisa’ never sounded so good

How do we look back on EDSA? How do we look back on an event that gave us so much but also so little?

The reality is, we are as corrupt and as broken as ever. The poor are as poor as ever, preoccupied with everyday survival. The political and business elite, blessed with time and resources to rebuild a nation, is preoccupied with themselves. 

Political scientist Aries Arugay said in an interview with Marites Vitug that the fatal flaw of EDSA is that we took it for granted that our lives will be collectively better just because we kicked out one dynasty.

Now, all we’re sure of 40 years after is that Filipinos are great at those one-time, big-time events, but not the long haul. We like the fiesta, but not the clean-up after. We did not set up a truth commission that would have left no room for reinterpretation. We wrote it into our history books, but didn’t launch a re-education campaign to bake it into our future generations’ consciousness.

And, after 40 years, we really missed the forest for the trees, because EDSA was all about unity, common ground, and meeting halfway. Today, groups with a historical connection to the highway uprising can’t even stand to be in the same space, much less negotiate a concelebrated affair. 

To the leaders of both groups who offer themselves up as a political alternative to trapo politics: This is a litmus test. If you can’t navigate the waters of alliance building and tactical unity over one day, what will you stand for when you do ascend to power? Will you be inclusive then when you’re being exclusionary now? Will you be respectful then when you can’t even tolerate a difference of opinion now? 

As Dean Tony la Viña says, “EDSA is a long and wide highway.” He says “EDSA 1986 was a spontaneous eruption of difference. It found common cause without asking permission.”

A democratic icon once used the term “better angels of our nature” to call on a people’s shared moral conscience, empathy, and decency to avoid division. Unfortunately, EDSA’s divided stakeholders may see this as an exercise in protecting political turf. 

However, we in Rappler also hope they see the forest. It should be an exercise in dialogue and not one-upmanship. It’s not the time to resurrect old hurts and accusations. On the contrary, it’s time to see past each other’s faults, and realize that, h*ll, we’ve been on this highway before 40 years ago.

We should be wiser, kinder, less rigid.

Because that’s the best way to honor EDSA — to show the world that we’ve finally grown up, and we’re ready to face an old monster we never took down 40 years ago — corruption — and that we’ll fight that monster with a power we never learned to master: true accountability. Together. United. 

The song “Magkaisa” never sounded so poignant. – Rappler.com