In response to the 34th year of commemoration of the Martial Rule in the Philippines in the Ateneo, the Department of Political Science launches Martial Law and EDSA discussion series SERIES 06-2020. 

The Ebook is a relevant collection of perspectives on Martial Law in the Philippines in the context of 34 years of our democratization experience.  As authors pitched in their take on the EDSA democratization project, these issues were unveiled.

Firstly the narrative that EDSA as “a call and challenge for social solidarity and political engagement” (Tolosa 2015) is also staging ground for parallel and intergenerational stories of democratic struggles (Tolosa 2015). EDSA’s “cultural and religious” underpinnings make it a unifying event that  “… matched the culture of a people whose religion was part of it.” (Tolosa 2016) 

At the same time these narratives confront chokepoints in:

• The challenge to move beyond juridical democracy (Charentenay 2014)
• To address the tensions between “hybrities” and the “contradictory logics of personalism and particularism” and rationalism and public good  on the one hand (Tolosa 2016) 
• The close or narrow the gap between executive residual unstated power and constitutionalism  (Lim 2017)

Writers who think that oligarchy (Rivera 2020) has underpinned post EDSA society, 34 years after People Power, believe that sustained dynastic politics has altered the political structure, that ripened up to new patronage (Salvador 2016) and Duterteism (Abao 2018). Did not the inability of the state and society to “interiorize the criterias of democracy when making their choice” (Charentenay 2014) led many Filipinos to support Martial Law 30 years thereafter (Barretto 2017)? 

In the end, authors provoke their readers: complacency amid EDSA’s “democratic gamble” (Rivera 2020) creates a damage that is “deep, multi-dimensional and far-reaching” (Abao 2018). Let not this thwart our “capacity” to revive our ideals of democratic change.