Aquino, Arroyo and Ramos join the commemoration of the EDSA People Power Uprising

ILOILO CITY, Philippines, February 25 (IslamOnline.net) - Celebrating the 18th anniversary of the bloodless popular EDSA uprising that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos and ended 20 years of authoritarian rule, many Filipinos regretted nothing much has changed in the lives of ordinary citizens.

"In terms of political manipulations, desperation and obsession to stay in power, President [Gloria] Arroyo is proving to be the ‘reincarnation’ of the corrupt Marcos regime," Allan Jose Arcebuche, chairperson of Promotion of Church-People’s Response, told IslamOnline.net on Wednesday, February 25.

He asserted that in Mindanao "the people suffered Marcos’s reincarnation through Arroyo’s all-out war policy, approval of renewed U.S. military presence and state-sponsored terrorist bombings, which aimed to portray the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as a terrorist group and therefore justify Arroyo’s welcoming of more U.S. troops purportedly to fight terrorism in the country."

Arcebuche on Filipinos to reject the candidacy of Arroyo for her failure "to depart from the record of corruption and human rights abuses of the Marcos and Estrada regimes."

"In the spirit of EDSA," he said, "let us continue the fight for justice and good governance and more so, let us stop Arroyo from continuing Marcos’ legacy of corruption and militarism beyond 2004."

Meanwhile, Rita Melecio, regional coordinator of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines for Northern and Southern Mindanao, said "it is ironic that political detention still continues to exist in our country despite the Philippines is claiming that its citizens are enjoying a ‘democracy’."

She stressed that there are 225 political prisoners and detainees who remain locked inside detentions centers all over the country, 42 of whom are coming from Northern and Southern Mindanao region.

"Some of them spent years in jails far from their families while 14 of the detainees experienced torture during their captivity and are suffering from psychological trauma," she told IOL.

"There are two women, one elderly and three minors, who are in detention," Melecio said.

"It is timely to assess and remember what we have struggled and fought for during the 1986 EDSA."

The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, Melecio said, calls on the government to release all political detainees and prisoners as one way of restoring democracy in the country.

Professor Walden Bello, in the introduction to an upcoming book "The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis: The Philippines, 1986-2003," wrote that the "history of the last 18 years has been a dreary one for most Filipinos.

"The promise of political liberation and economic and social progress that accompanied the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 remained just that: a promise."

Bello underlined an "overwhelming need for a program for economic growth that will address the country's gaping social inequalities," noting that this "is a topic studiously avoided by the leading candidates-the administration because it has led the country to its worse fiscal crisis, the opposition because its presidential candidate does not have a grasp of basic economics."

He pointed out that the election "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."

The same opinion was shared by a leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales

"There are lessons unlearned from EDSA… We have yet to learn that freedom is a gift. We have yet to be taught that freedom is an educative process."

Still, former president Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos, who figured prominently during the EDSA uprising, remain optimistic about the country’s future.

Aquino urged everyone to help shape a better Philippines.

"I want all of us working together to make this country of ours the great country that it was meant to be," she said in a speech during the ceremony marking the uprising anniversary.

Ramos, Marcos’s cousin and then chief of the Philippine Constabulary who launched a coup that eventually resulted in the massing up of millions of people along the Epifanio De los Santos Avenue or EDSA, said the same.

"Let us unite and work together to achieve the important ideals of our people," said Ramos, who took the presidency after Aquino.

She was picked to take her husband’s place in challenging Marcos in the 1986 election.

Aquino’s husband, senator Benigno Aquino Jr, was Marcos’s staunchest political opponent and was assassinated upon disembarking from a plane that took him from the United States to Taiwan.

His death lit the fire that culminated in the overthrow of the Marcos government through the EDSA uprising that started February 1986.

He was declared a national hero by President Arroyo on Wednesday.