Filipino people the real heroes of EDSA, say RAM boys

Thirty years after history was made, prominent figures from the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) spoke about the 1986 People Power Revolution, detailing their first-hand accounts on the foiled plan to oust late President Ferdinand Marcos and talking about how young Filipinos can learn from the Martial Law era.

"When the Filipino people get together, the Filipinos all over the world — because EDSA was not a physical location, it was an idea for reform and good governance — get together... change is possible, not only changes in personalities but changes in the system," Senator Gringo Honasan said during a forum after the advanced screening of Discovery Channel’s new documentary "People Power: 30 YEARS ON" at Quezon City Museum.

Honasan was a member of the RAM as well as an aide-de-camp to then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. Honasan later became the department’s Chief of Security.

RAM was a group of officers from the Armed Forces of the Philippines who broke away from the leadership of Marcos and attempted to seize Malacañang from the dictator. But after their plan was foiled, hundreds of thousands of people converged on EDSA for their protection, triggering the bloodless ouster of Marcos.

In the documentary, Honasan said that RAM never wanted to hurt the Marcos family but only to take the power from the dictator. In the forum, he said that one of RAM’s goals was to create a national unification council to manage the transition of government.

Although RAM played a key role in the events that led to the revolution, Honasan stressed that it was the collective effort of the Filipino people and the different branches of society that brought change.

"Looking back, the real heroes are too many to fit in to this room... We’re just poor substitutes," Honasan said.

"When you talk about heroism, we talk in iconic terms, superstars. No. By ancient definition, heroes were any person, young or old, man or woman who build for the next generation and that was EDSA 30 years ago was all about," he added.

New generation

As the 1986 People Power Revolution has been 30 years away from the new generation, many young people especially on social media expressed their desire for a return to an iron fist style of governance.

"How would the young people now know how it [was] back then?... You must try to learn accurately as you can," Honasan said.

The senator encouraged the younger people to learn from history and challenged them to do better.

"You are your own future. All we can do is help you build that future. For example, teach you what happened 30 years ago, what courage means, what discipline means so you won’t be dependent on your dad, your country, your family... We did it, your parents, 30 years ago. I think you can do it better," he said.

"That’s the lesson of EDSA... Learn to improve. Build a strong nation," he added.

Fellow RAM member former Navy Captain Felix Turingan thinks the younger generation does not appreciate the 1986 People Power Revolution because of the current state of the country. Corruption, violence, drugs, and communist and Moro rebellion are still rampant, he pointed out.

"My regret, if you call it regret, is that a lot of goals of EDSA were not achieved. I was hoping that after Marcos, so many things especially those what’s good for the country, could have been done. The leaders of that time were looked up to. They could have done anything! But they didn’t, for one reason or another. They didn’t do much to improve the country," he said.

But Sister Sarah Manapol, “The Lady In White” who provided information to the US Embassy during the revolution and to the late Radio Veritas/Radyo Bandido broadcaster June Keithley, said that all those things pale in comparison to what was achieved at EDSA.

"A lot of people tell me, ‘But there’s still a lot of corruption.’ I don’t care. You won’t talk the way you do right now if you don’t have the freedom.  I won’t be able to express the things I have right now if I didn’t have EDSA," she said. —JST, GMA News