Manila: As Filipinos mark the 26th year of Marcos' overthrow, militant groups iterate that such a transition to democracy would not have been possible had it not been for the collective efforts of people fighting the dictatorship.
"We pay tribute to the Filipino people who rose in their millions against the United States-Marcos dictatorship. Edsa was the culmination of a long movement against the US-backed Marcos dictatorship," Renato M. Reyes, junior secretary-general of the New Nationalist Movement (Bayan), said in a statement.
Edsa refers to Epifanio delos Santos Avenue, which is Metro Manila's thoroughfare that served as the rally point for groups trying to eject the two-decade-old dictatorship of Marcos.
"Let us also remember the many youth and students who went underground and offered their lives while fighting the dictatorship."
For four tension-filled days from February 22 to 25, 1986, Filipinos in Metro Manila took to the streets to convince Marcos that he did not command people's trust any more.
Marcos eventually fled but not without plundering the country's coffers and leaving it bankrupt.
Hijacked by opportunists
Twenty-six years after the uprising, militants who took to the streets to eject the dictator, lament that the movement they had started in the 1970s had been hijacked by opportunists, who never intended it to be a fountainhead needed for reform.
"We commemorate Edsa I [the 1986 revolution to eject Marcos] not because it represents a heroism that is singularly ascribed to any one person or political ‘colour'. We commemorate Edsa I because it represents the Filipino people's dreams and aspirations that have yet to be fulfilled."
