Should we give up on people power?
Randy David for the Inquirer News Service
If the participants of EDSA 1 and EDSA 2 were to be asked today if they would join another people power uprising, they would likely say no. They would say that people power promises many things but delivers nothing. That it substitutes the shortcut of a political surgery for the long painstaking task of building a healthy democracy.
A requiem for the EDSA system?
Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South
As the campaign for the presidential elections of May 2004 unfolds, there is a sense in the air that the 'EDSA system' may be on its last legs. A carbon copy of the electoral democracy that was the country’s system of governance before it was destroyed by Ferdinand Marcos in September 1972, EDSA has reproduced most of its faults of the former: it has encouraged maximum factional competition among the elite while allowing them to maintain a united front against any change in the system of social and economic inequality.
No more EDSA revolts
Jose V. Abueva
No more Edsa revolts! Instead, let us institutionalize people power by reforming and modernizing our various political institutions, including elections and political parties. Only then can we have good governance through responsible and effective leaders and citizens, and a supportive new political culture.
Two-way street
Conrado de Quiros for the Philippine Daily Inquirer
It's no small irony that we also call Edsa 'people power' when it is the people who disappear after Edsa. Certainly, whose power disappears after Edsa, the ensuing government imposing its will on us rather than the other way around. Well, take it from its provenance: Edsa is a very long road.
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