On February 25, 2026, the Philippines marks the 40th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Uprising, the four-day mobilization from February 22 to 25, 1986, that forced the strongmanFerdinand Marcos Sr.from Malacañang and installedCorazon Aquinoin his stead. The event, now canonized in textbooks and commemorations, is frequently invoked as a triumph of democratic will and thus interpreted as proof that unarmed citizens can bend the arc of history.
Yet four decades on, a more unsettling question intrudes: if EDSA was the decisive rupture it is said to be, how did the Philippines arrive at a political moment in whichBongbong Marcos,son of the deposed dictator, occupies the presidency, alongsideSara Duterte, heir to another formidable political dynasty? The restoration, many argue, is complete.
To commemorate EDSA honestly in 2026 is not to rehearse its mythology, but to interrogate its limits.
The language of “People Power” suggests a revolution considered as a foundational reordering of the political and social contract. But EDSA was, more precisely, an insurrection: a dramatic and morally potent uprising that removed a ruler without dismantling the architecture that enabled his rule.
The dictator fell. The system did not.
Political dynasties endured. Patronage networks persisted. Oligarchic dominance remained intact. The coercive and extractive logics of Philippine politics survived the transition. In this light, EDSA did not inaugurate a new order; it rearranged the furniture of the elite.
The romanticization of EDSA by elevating itto near-sacred status has often served as a substitute for deeper structural reform. Annual commemorations risk becoming ritualistic absolution, obscuring the harder truth that the uprising did not decisively transform the political economy that sustains dynastic rule.
The ascent of Marcos Jr. and Duterte is not merely the product of political maneuvering, though maneuver they certainly have. It is also the consequence of a system in which accountability is spectral, i.e., invoked rhetorically but rarely enforced institutionally.
To interrogate their mandate is to confront an uncomfortable premise: a politically underdeveloped electorate, susceptible to disinformation, nostalgia, and the transactional allure of patronage politics. Despite the global transformations of the 21st century characterized by digital connectivity, expanded education, and economic integration, the aggregate Filipino voter has not undergone a parallel maturation in civic consciousness.
This is not a condemnation of individual citizens so much as an indictment of the structural conditions that shape political subjectivity. Decades of underinvestment in civic education, endemic inequality, weak party systems, and a media ecosystem vulnerable to manipulation have conspired to produce an electorate that is mobilized episodically but rarely empowered systematically.
Source: Global Research
