“We celebrate the EDSA People Power through the unwavering vow that we will never forget,” San Carlos Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, Church People-Workers Solidarity chairperson, said in a CWS statement Thursday, February 24.
The bishops, priests, religious, laity and workers of the CWS are one with the whole nation in celebrating the 36th year of the EDSA People Power through the steadfast resolve to keep the EDSA spirit alive by safeguarding democracy, he said.
“We celebrate EDSA by working to transform our political culture against political dynasties, vote-buying, pandemic of lies, fake news, disinformation, historical revisionism and most of all, to never allow another Marcos in Malacañang,” Alminaza said.
The Filipinos revolted against then president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who trampled on the workers’ and the peoples’ rights, he said.
It was Marcos who started implementing neoliberal “free market” policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s that led to deregulation and privatization of basic utilities such as oil and power, the CSW statement said.
Marcos signed the Presidential Decree 442 that facilitated the practice of contractualization, and was adopted in the Philippine Labor Code in 1974, it said.
Marcos was also the most anti-nationalist and anti-labor president who opened and restructured the Philippine economy according to the needs of foreign corporations, aside from institutionalizing cheap labor export and other anti- labor policies, it added.
“The EDSA protests in 1986 were a remarkable moment in Philippine history when the Filipino people were able to get rid of a dictator, putting an end to a twenty-year authoritarian rule,” Alminaza said.
This year’s commemoration of the EDSA revolution becomes meaningful only in the people’s resolve to thwart Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. ‘s goal of reclaiming power, the CSW added.*