For almost four decades, the word EDSA has carried both pride and pain. Pride, because it symbolized the moment when an unarmed people stood shoulder to shoulder and toppled a dictatorship without firing a shot. Pain, because the promise of that revolution—justice, honesty in public service, equality before the law—was squandered, sold, and betrayed by the very people who rode EDSA to power.
EDSA 1986, and later EDSA Dos in 2001, were supposed to be milestones of national rebirth. Instead, they became springboards for opportunists who claimed the mantle of democracy only to enrich themselves. They were not guardians of the revolution, but grave diggers of its spirit. Senators, congressmen, Cabinet officials, generals, and so-called civil society leaders all took turns wrapping themselves in the flag of People Power, only to plunder budgets, entrench dynasties, and perpetuate the same culture of impunity they once denounced.
The result was a grotesque irony: the revolution that was supposed to end corruption gave birth to a new class of plunderers. The oligarchs multiplied. Political clans expanded. The same names recycled themselves in the Senate, in Congress, in Malacañang, each time proclaiming they were the “true heirs of EDSA.” And yet the ordinary Filipino remained trapped in the same vicious cycle of floods, poverty, and broken promises.
It is against this backdrop that today’s events gain their full weight. Because in 2025, it is not an Aquino, a Ramos, or any of the so-called “children of EDSA” who has revived the revolution’s true meaning. It is Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.—the son of the man whom EDSA toppled in 1986.
That sentence alone is enough to make history tremble with irony. But history also has a way of coming full circle.
By exposing the trillion-peso flood-control mafia—composed of lawmakers, government engineers, and favored contractors—Bongbong ripped open the cloak of silence that had long protected one of the most entrenched syndicates in Philippine politics. What he revealed was not mere inefficiency. It was calculated theft: ghost projects, collapsing dikes, embankments that crumbled under a drizzle, drainage systems that existed only on paper. While Filipinos waded through floodwater in their barangays, politicians and contractors were drowning in cash.
And then, in a statement that shook both his allies and his critics, Bongbong declared that if he were not president, he would join the protests himself. In that moment, he reclaimed the moral ground of EDSA—not as a symbol of partisan vengeance, but as a rallying cry against corruption. “I AM ANGRY!,” he declared.
The Civil Service Commission’s decision to allow government employees to join the protests—so long as they avoid violence—only underscores the gravity of this moment. Even the bureaucracy, often seen as a silent accomplice, now recognizes the legitimacy of public outrage.
The irony is staggering. EDSA, once the site where Filipinos rose to expel a Marcos, has become the ground where a Marcos redeems its betrayed promise. It was not Cory Aquino or Gloria Arroyo or the many self-proclaimed apostles of People Power who finally struck at the heart of the budgetary syndicates. It was Bongbong Marcos, the supposed heir to dictatorship, who unmasked the corruption that flourished under the very politicians who swore they were the defenders of democracy.
This is not about erasing history. Marcos Sr. fell for a reason, and that reason must never be forgotten. But history’s betrayal after 1986 must also be confronted. For decades, those who benefited from People Power mocked it in practice. They mouthed “Never Again” while engaging in the very acts of plunder they once condemned. They turned EDSA into a slogan for textbooks and rallies, but drained it of its soul.
That is why today’s protests matter. They are not simply about flood-control contracts. They are about reclaiming EDSA from those who poisoned it. They are about saying that democracy is not the exclusive property of yellow ribbons or red banners. They are about reminding us that People Power is not about personalities—it is about accountability.
The tragedy of EDSA is that it was hijacked by opportunists. The irony of today is that a Marcos is the one redeeming it. Perhaps this is how history heals: not by returning to the past, but by forcing us to confront its betrayals and correct them.
If Bongbong sustains this fight, and if Filipinos refuse to let their anger be pacified by token resignations or scapegoats, then perhaps EDSA will finally be what it was meant to be: not a monument to toppled tyrants, but a living spirit of justice.
A Marcos once symbolized EDSA’s downfall. Today, a Marcos may yet symbolize its redemption.
