Taking our power back

This year marks 40 years since the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution, an uprising made famous worldwide for its lack of bloodshed. Not that the people who marched expected a peaceful ending, mind you. As an Edsa baby, I was told the following story. My parents separately decided to go to Edsa without telling the other. Each one thought that if something bad were to happen, there would at least be one parent left to care for me, at the time only less than a year old. Imagine their shock when they saw each other! I am personally grateful that the historic event returned both parents back to me, safe and sound.

My parents’ story takes on a whole new meaning for me, now a 40-year-old mother with a toddler and a newborn. As a kid, I merely thought the story made for a romantic family legend. But it is only now I can fully appreciate the serious calculation of risk that my parents made. It also meant that they felt that the nation’s freedom from tyranny were worth fighting for.

Beyond remembering the events that took place in the past, we must reflect on what it means in the present and how it can guide us toward our future. What does “people power” mean today? What powers can we exercise in 2026, as people and citizens?

We erroneously focus on the big personalities associated with the 1986 revolt. Consequently, some think of it as a movement solely in support for specific people or parties. But that indicates a failure to understand what people power was truly about, making it feel impossible for us to harness today.

From a behavioral lens, we attempt to understand a chain of events to understand why people do what they do, what led to such behavior, and what factors prevent or promote such behavior. A common mistake in analyzing behavior is mistaking the proximal event as the true cause of a behavior. The proximal event–the event that happened right before a behavior–is not sufficient for us to fully explain a behavior. Think of the proximal event as the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back.” We have distal events that may contribute more heavily into a person’s urge to act, increasing the likelihood for action once an opportunity–the proximal event–presents itself.

In the case of the 1986 Edsa People Power, the proximal event was the call to rally by figures such as Cardinal Jaime Sin who asked the public to protect and support Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos, who resigned and defected from Marcos Sr.’s government. It would be a mistake to simplify the revolution as due to Filipinos supporting these specific individuals. We need to look years back to fully understand what has spurred Filipinos to act. There was the decades-long martial law, marred by violation of human rights including the disappearance and killing of many Filipinos. There was the assassination of Ninoy Aquino Jr. There was the national election that the government was pressured to hold to provide a semblance of democratic process. The fraudulent results exposed to the public that the government was never interested in returning their rights and freedoms, furthering civil unrest.

Cardinal Sin’s call to rally support and protection for Enrile and Ramos came after decades of suffering and injustice. The opportunity happened after Filipinos have tried many avenues to give government a chance to rectify itself. We call it people power because the heroes weren’t Cardinal Sin, Enrile, or Ramos–the heroes were the people themselves. It wasn’t about loyalists for the Aquinos or Marcoses; it was a fight to restore democracy. And so as much as economic and political problems continue to plague us–political dynasties, corruption, unbearable cost of living–the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution returned something valuable to us: democracy.

Our present challenge lies in how to maintain this democracy and how to exercise our democratic rights in a way that improves Filipinos’ lives. Placing our focus only on proximal events have made the error of thinking that we need political heroes to harness our people power. This is why Cardinal Sin’s subsequent attempts to recreate people power was hit-or-miss, because it was not his power to wield. Other parties and actors, on both sides of the political aisle, have also tried to declare people power to either overthrow their opponents or to shield themselves from accountability. But since people power wasn’t really about protecting politicians but about protecting freedoms, their attempts, too, failed.

We should never forget that people power lies in us, the Filipino people. Our collective power as fellow citizens, the ability to recognize that we all suffer the same fate, is what will help steer ourselves back toward liberty and self-determination. Our parents fought hard to ensure that power remains in our hands. By exercising our democratic rights–to vote sincerely, to assemble and express our views honestly, to use due process and preserve civil liberties–we can keep people power alive.

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aatuazon@up.edu.ph