Social conditions remain essentially unchanged after EDSA

News release, 22 February 1999

While freeing the people from the clutches of fascist tyrant, the 1986 EDSA Uprising merely led to the transfer of power into the hands of another reactionary, to be followed by another faction of the exploiting classes. Thirteen years after the so-called People Power Revolution, social conditions in the Philippines remain essentially unchanged, the plight of the Filipino masses is worse than before. The main sectors of society, the workers and the peasants, are still mired in the deepest and most miserable poverty.

This was the statement of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) chairperson Crispin Beltran on the anniversary of the EDSA uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.

Beltran said that the gains that the EDSA uprising supposedly won were immediately exposed as hollow and illusory a few months after the euphoria died down. According to Beltran, the then-newly installed Aquino government did nothing to address the basic demands of the Filipino people.

Mrs. Aquino did not do away with the anti-people, virulently anti-worker policies implemented by the previous regime; and neither did she initiate a genuine agrarian reform program. Hacienda Luisita was exempted from the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), and the new Congress passed the Herrera law that virtually legalized contractualization and union busting. And one year after the Aquino regime's installation, 13 farmers and workers were slaughtered in Mendiola, and former KMU chairperson Rolando Olalia and his aide Ka Leonor Alay-ay were brutally mudered. Were these part of the supposed restoration of democracy in the Philippines? The main perpetrators of the Mendiola massacre and the murders of two KMU leaders remain free, and they continue to enjoy positions of power and privilege, he said.

A passing glance at the labor situation 13 years after EDSA:

• Unemployment rate: 13. 3%—increase up to 30% if OFWs are included (employed outside the country) *Retrenchments at a rate of 435 affected everyday *Poverty incidence: about 75% live under the poverty line *Minimum wage: P198 in the NCR, P130 in the Caraga region; peso value pegged at P0.31 because of devaluation *Unresolved trade union cases piled up at the DOLE, the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) Union busting and violent harrassment of picketlines as seen in the cases of Philippine Airlines (PAL) ; PICOP Paper Industries; Jackbilt Construction; Aladdin Transport; Gomeco Metals; Plasprint Industries; F. Gaita Enterprises; in the various companies inside the Cavite and Laguna export processing zones (EPZs).
• Massive implementation of contractualization and other forms of flexible labor The Filipino people have no reason to rejoice in the commemorating EDSA. The conditions that pushed the 1986 uprising remain and have even worsened after Marcos. Aquino implemented the total war policy and vainly sought the retention of the US military bases, and opened up the country to the depredations of foreign monopoly firms and banks. Then Ramos further pushed the imperialist globalization policies of trade and financial liberalization, deregulation, and privatization that resulted in the sale of formerly-protected and government-controlled vital industries and services to foreign monopoly capitalists and local big business interests. Now, under Estrada, the Marcoses and their cronies have been fully rahabilitated and allowed to recover their ill-gotten assets. EDSA was truly a heroic feat of the people, but their interests and aspirations were treacherously dashed to the ground by the elite holders of power that succeeded Marcos, he concluded.