EDSA 31

The EDSA Monument is crumbling. The hope and ideals for which it stands are lost in commemoration, 31 years later.

Today it speaks of betrayal against those who fought hard to restore freedom and democracy, and who sought to expansively create a better Philippine society where the man on the street will have the same rights and opportunities as those who control government and private enterprise with their vast resources and power.

Today, the EDSA Monument has become a bully pulpit for a watered-down issue that concerns only a few: exhuming the remains of Ferdinand E. Marcos from the burial site at Libingan Ng Mga Bayani.

Is this what the movement under which many fought hard and risked their lives has come down to? Dig up a grave?

How about making EDSA 31 a rallying cry to finally end poverty, corruption, criminality, oligarchy and to preserve and defend our freedom from local and foreign threats?

But no, more than anything else, it seems that what is most important is to live and relive the memory of a dead man buried underground and to keep harping with an old and tired meme of “Never Again,” while our nation and people continue to languish under the same, or worse circumstances that led us to march on EDSA in the first place.

EDSA 31: lost in commemoration.

This article was submitted to us by Rene Astudillo. Rene has his own blog site, Politikal Pinoy, and runs the satire site Adobo Chronicles. To follow him on FB, click image.