Reprinted with permission from the author
First published in Philippine Star, Opinion Section, Feb. 24, 2026
Forty years is long enough for emotion to soften and memory to settle. What remains of Edsa is no longer the noise of those days but the meaning of what was reclaimed. In 1986, power changed hands without civil war. A people long accustomed to fear chose instead to restore constitutional rule. That moral reset still matters.
Edsa did not promise perfection. It promised restoration. It reopened elections, revived a free press and reaffirmed that sovereignty resides in the people. For a nation wary of institutions, it was a reminder that laws and limits still counted.
Revolutions remove rulers; institutions take generations to build. That distinction is crucial. The weaknesses that persisted after 1986 : dynastic politics, patronage networks, corruption that adapted rather than disappeared were not proof that Edsa failed. They showed that structural reform demands patience, discipline and sustained political will.
Forty years later, the assessment is mixed. We have seen peaceful transfers of power. We have watched courts assert themselves and citizens mobilize. Yet we have also witnessed institutional fatigue and the erosion that comes when vigilance wanes. Democracy, it turns out, is not self-executing.
That is why Edsa remains relevant, not as nostalgia but as standard. Memory can inspire but it cannot substitute for work. Nostalgia is not a strategy. Neither is democracy a mere anniversary. Commemoration alone does not strengthen institutions. Civic virtue and civic discipline do.
Edsa was not the culmination of democratic life; it was the reopening of it. The journey did not end on that highway in 1986. It merely began anew.
At 40, the question is no longer whether it was worth it. The more searching question is whether we have sustained what it made possible and whether we are prepared, again and again, to finish what we started.
