AS the country commemorates on Monday the 33rd EDSA People Power Revolt, which ended the 20-year reign of the late president Ferdinand Marcos, a panel of analysts said the bloodless uprising did not bring about much structural change.

Clarita Carlos, a political science professor of the University of the Philippines said in a panel discussion on the 1986 People Power event during a live test broadcast of The Manila Times TV (TMTTV) from its Intramuros studio, “There has been no structural change after 33 years. We should not call it a ‘revolution.'”

She said what happened at EDSA only involved the replacement of the ruling elite. “Pinalitan mo lang si (You just changed) Marcos et al, to Aquino, Roxas etc.”





Carlos said that the peaceful revolt should just be called a “people power event,” because for an occasion to be called a revolution, there must be “structural change.”

The professor said that the country’s political system remains “still broken.”

“First we are still under a presidential system, where every 2,000 days you change the face of the president; and every 1,000 days you change the face of Congress,” Carlos said. She added, she had high hopes of change when she joined the revolt against Marcos in 1986, but nothing significant happened.

Columnist and former ambassador Alejandro del Rosario echoed Carlos, but said the Philippines’ people power “inspired” other countries, mostly in Eastern Europe like Ukraine and Romania, to demand change in a similar people-power fashion of civil resistance, resulting in their “Orange” and “Velvet” revolutions.

As for Fr. Larry Faraon, people power was a “moment in [Philippine] history” that the country could immortalize and learn from.

Led by a band of rebel troops under the leadership of then Marcos Defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Philippine Constabulary chief Fidel V. Ramos, over a million people massed and prayed in Edsa for four days in February 1986 to demand the ouster of Marcos who was accused of cheating his opponent, Corazon Aquino, widow of senator Benigno Aquino Jr., in the snap presidential elections.

With the support of the Catholic Church under the leadership of the late Jaime Cardinal Sin and a clandestine group of media men and women who provided news updates, the EDSA revolt toppled the Marcos regime and became an example of peaceful change worldwide.