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Historians Salvador Escalante and J. Augustus Y. de la Paz, of the Truth and Justice Foundation, asked:

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If it was a genuine revolution, where are the radical changes that it should have set in place?


If it was popular, why were the beneficiaries so few?


If it was all-Filipino, why was there American intervention?


If it was for Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino (the slain senator), how valid a cause was he?


If it was meant to install his wife, Cory Aquino, to the presidency, was it worth it?


And why has life become so much harder, and politics even more corrupt, after the so-called People Power uprising supposedly restored democracy?

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Not only that. In the post-EDSA years, five presidents who succeeded President Marcos, Mrs. Aquino, her son Benigno III and the three between them: Presidents Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, spent more than P35 trillion in accumulated national budgets, compared to President Marcos’s total budget in 20 years of only P486.42 billion and, yet, the country remains at the bottom of the five originals who organized the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The four others—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore—are now acknowledged newly industrialized and progressive countries.



On March 15, 1986 President Aquino, without prior consultation with Vice President Salvador Laurel, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and other key participants of the EDSA Revolution, created a Special Cabinet Committee (SCC) to decide whether the new government would operate outside the 1973 Constitution.


The prime objective was to determine whether the 1973 Constitution would be abolished.


The SCC was composed of Minister of Justice Neptali Gonzales as chairman and members of parliament (MPs) Luis Villafuerte and Antonio Cuenco, Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo and Laurel himself, as members.


Gonzales proposed the abolition of the Constitution and the proclamation of a Revolutionary Government under a Freedom Constitution.


Enrile strongly opposed the idea and argued that preserving the existing Constitution would ensure political stability.


Laurel, likewise, objected to the abolition, as he pointed out that the Gonzales proposal would result in a dictatorial government and would exist beyond the ambit of judicial review.


United Nationalist Democratic Organizations (UNIDO) MPs supported Laurel and Enrile’s observations, and told Mrs. Aquino that there was no need to abolish the Parliament because there was a new majority, which was ready to support the new administration.


Based on the minutes of a meeting recorded by lawyers Avelino V. Cruz and Minerva Reyes, the clear consensus was that the Parliament would give the President emergency powers through a proclamation, so that she could move on smoothly to discharge her power effectively along the lines enunciated in Gonzales’s draft of a Freedom Constitution.


As planned, the Parliament stays and reconvenes on May 12, 1986, to adopt the proclamation of emergency powers. At the same time, it would annul the proclamation of President Marcos and Vice President Arturo Tolentino and declare Mrs. Aquino and Salvador H. Laurel as the duly elected President and Vice President, respectively.


The new government would be properly inaugurated and begin to operate under the existing legal framework, subject to the provisions of the Emergency Powers Proclamation under the Freedom Constitution. The Emergency Powers Proclamation would include a complete timetable for full transition to normalcy, including the adoption of a new Constitution and the holding of elections under it.


Accordingly, lawyer Avelino Cruz, representing Arroyo, lawyer Minerva Reyes, and Deputy Justice Minister Reynato Puno, representing Gonzales, drafted the fast-track plan.


The plan, however, failed to materialize and was never heard of again.


Malacañang secretly hatched another plan, and suddenly executed it without the knowledge of Laurel, Enrile, the rebel officers, as well as the majority of the Parliament.


"It was political treachery of the highest order", Laurel said, adding that a new power group had quietly taken over Malacañang.


Earlier Laurel and Enrile, with the full knowledge of Mrs. Aquino, had been meeting with the Parliament members, with the help of former Prime Minister Cesar Virata, former Parliament Speaker Nicanor Yniguez, minority floor leader Jose B. Laurel Jr., and all the UNIDO MPs.


They were able to obtain the commitment of 132 members, a clear majority in the Parliament, with more members willing to join the bandwagon.


Recalling the incident, Laurel said: 

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"We had agreed that the new majority would annul the proclamation of Marcos and Tolentino, that Cory and myself would instead be proclaimed, after which I would be formally installed as Prime Minister. The new majority, likewise, assured me that they would support the entire legislative program to be presented by the Aquino administration."

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Outgoing Prime Minister Cesar Virata, obviously oblivious of what was happening in Malacañang, formally turned over to Salvador Laurel the Office of the Prime Minister in a simple ceremony at the Executive House at 1 p.m., March 25, 1986.


Two hours after the symbolic turnover, President Corazon C. Aquino invited Laurel, Juan Ponce Enrile and other Cabinet members to attend a press conference in Malacañang.


Suddenly, Mrs. Aquino proceeded to read Proclamation 3, abolishing the 1973 Constitution, the Parliament, the Supreme Court, the office of the Prime Minister, and all national and local positions.


Laurel, Enrile and the rest of the officials present could not believe their ears. Aquino and her advisers had unilaterally set up a revolutionary government.


Furious and feeling betrayed, Laurel recalled later: 

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"It was not only politically reckless, but economically disastrous, as the country would be pushed back to the martial law years."

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Enrile, Laurel, the rebel officers, as well as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization leaders, had played a very important role in the ouster of Marcos. They gambled with their lives and gave up so much of their time to bring the new government to power.


Any decision involving no less than the abolition of the Constitution should have at least been discussed and debated with them.


Yet, they were not even consulted. They felt betrayed and it was too late to complain.


Laurel said later:

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"History might have taken a different course if President Aquino had not abolished the 1973 Constitution, and if her avowed objective was to achieve political stability at the earliest possible date, she should have repealed only the highly objectionable Marcos amendments, particularly Amendment 6, which had clothed himself with legislative powers and perpetuated military rule.


"It was like burning a whole house just to kill a rat!"

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Laurel was right because when she demolished the infrastructure of dictatorship, she wrecked the entire political structure and, thus, derailed the application of much needed solutions to the country's worsening political, social and economic problems. Besides, there would have been no need up to now to debate the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of going back to a parliamentary form of government or a federal system of government. Or of wasting time and taxpayers' money arguing whether to amend or revise the Constitution.


Laurel said: 

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"We could have saved precious years and the billions of pesos spent in running the country under a revolutionary government, in framing a new but flawed Constitution and in holding expensive local and national elections.


"We could have avoided bitter partisan resentments caused by the arbitrary replacement of elected local officials by favored officers in charge.


"We could have addressed the urgent national problems sooner and gained political stability earlier."

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As for Laurel and the rest, the worst was yet to come. During the 100-day honeymoon period, Laurel and Enrile, in particular, were systematically eased out of Malacañang's inner circle.


Barely a month after Mrs. Aquino's oath taking, they became less and less privy to the decision-making process of the palace and more and more reduced to being outsiders, whose access to the presidency was being substantially sabotaged by a cordon sanitaire.


Laurel and Enrile were no longer invited to Malacañang, except for Cabinet meetings. Military intelligence reports that they used to receive every week stopped reaching them. Something was, indeed, cooking in Malacañang.


Laurel recalled:

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"And stoking the fires was the intense power struggle between two camps: one a left-leaning clique bereft of experience in statecraft that hated Enrile and the reformist officers and the other just as inexperienced but allied with big businesses and the powerful Catholic Church."

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Sources: 

<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
Edsa revisited by Cecilio T. Arillo, February 20, 2017, <a href="https://goo.gl/K5Evb5" target="_blank" class="news_link" title="Source">Business Mirror</a>
</li>
<li>
Greed & Betrayal by Cecilio T. Arillo, 2000 (<a href="https://goo.gl/poFYkE" class="news_link" title="Amazon" target="_blank">Amazon</a>)
</li>
<li>
A Country Imperiled-Tragic Lessons of a Distorted History by Cecilio T. Arillo, 2011 (<a href="https://goo.gl/lb4SNA" class="news_link" title="Amazon" target="_blank">Amazon</a>)
</li>
</ol>




(This article is adapted from the source listed above. We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)

EDSA revisited: Treachery of the highest order, how the 1973 Constitution was abolished