People Power Revolution 1986: Marcos Falls in the Philippines

The People Power Revolution was a largely non-violent uprising in the Philippines from 22 to 25 February 1986 that ended the 20-year rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. After a disputed snap election, a military revolt and a call from the Catholic Church brought hundreds of thousands of people onto Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Metro Manila, where they blocked government troops with their bodies, prayers and flowers.

The revolution made Corazon Aquino president and restored democratic institutions. It became an influential example of peaceful mass protest toppling an authoritarian ruler, three years before the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe.

Background: the Marcos years

Ferdinand Marcos was elected president in 1965 and re-elected in 1969. Barred by the constitution from a third term, he declared martial law in September 1972, citing communist and Muslim insurgencies. Congress was closed, opponents were jailed and the press was controlled. A new constitution let him rule by decree.

Martial law was formally lifted in January 1981, but Marcos kept sweeping powers. His rule became associated with “crony capitalism”, in which businesses were handed to allies, and with large-scale corruption by the president and his wife, Imelda Marcos. Human rights groups documented thousands of cases of torture, disappearance and killing.

On 21 August 1983 the opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was shot dead on the tarmac at Manila International Airport as he returned from exile in the United States. His funeral drew millions of mourners, and an official inquiry, the Agrava Board, blamed a military conspiracy. The killing, together with a severe economic crisis in 1983–1985, turned much of the middle class, business and the Church against the government.

The snap election

Under pressure from the United States, Marcos announced in November 1985 that he would hold an early presidential election to prove his mandate. The divided opposition united behind Ninoy Aquino’s widow, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, a political newcomer, with Salvador Laurel as her running mate.

The election on 7 February 1986 was marred by vote-buying, intimidation and violence. The official Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the citizens’ watchdog NAMFREL produced conflicting counts. On 9 February about 35 COMELEC computer workers walked out of the tabulation centre, saying the figures were being manipulated. On 15 February the National Assembly proclaimed Marcos the winner. The Catholic bishops had already condemned the poll as fraudulent, and on 16 February Aquino led a huge rally in Manila and called for a campaign of civil disobedience and boycotts of businesses linked to Marcos’s allies.

Four days at EDSA

On the afternoon of 22 February 1986, Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and the vice chief of staff, Lieutenant General Fidel V. Ramos, announced that they had withdrawn their support from Marcos. They barricaded themselves with a few hundred soldiers in Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, on either side of EDSA in Quezon City. A plot by reformist officers linked to Enrile had been discovered, and the rebels were in danger of being crushed.

That evening Cardinal Jaime Sin, Archbishop of Manila, went on the Catholic station Radio Veritas and urged people to go to EDSA to support the rebels. Over the next three days crowds, estimated from several hundred thousand to as many as two million, filled the avenue. Nuns, priests, students, families and office workers formed human barriers.

On 23 and 24 February, marines with tanks and armoured vehicles were sent towards the camps but were halted by crowds who knelt in front of them, offered food and prayed. On 24 February a squadron of air force helicopters sent against Camp Crame landed there and joined the rebels. More units defected, and rebel soldiers took over a government television station.

On the morning of 25 February, Corazon Aquino was sworn in as president at Club Filipino in San Juan by Supreme Court Justice Claudio Teehankee. Around noon Marcos held his own inauguration at Malacañang Palace. The United States, which had backed him for years, now urged him to leave. That night Marcos, his family and close associates were flown by US helicopters to Clark Air Base and then on to Guam and Hawaii, where they arrived on 26 February. Crowds entered the palace, where Imelda Marcos’s large collection of shoes became a symbol of the regime’s excess.

Key people

• Corazon Aquino (1933–2009): widow of Ninoy Aquino and president from 1986 to 1992.
• Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989): president from 1965 to 1986, who died in exile in Honolulu.
• Juan Ponce Enrile: Marcos’s defence minister, who broke with him on 22 February.
• Fidel V. Ramos (1928–2022): the general who led the military defection and was later president from 1992 to 1998.
• Cardinal Jaime Sin (1928–2005): Archbishop of Manila, whose broadcast brought the crowds to EDSA.

Aftermath

Aquino governed at first under a provisional “Freedom Constitution” and appointed a commission to draft a new charter, which voters approved in February 1987. It limited presidents to a single six-year term and restricted the use of martial law. A Presidential Commission on Good Government was created to recover wealth taken by Marcos and his associates, much of it held abroad.

The new government faced great difficulties. Reformist officers who had helped topple Marcos staged several coup attempts, the most serious in August 1987 and December 1989. The communist insurgency continued, and land reform and economic recovery proved slow. Marcos died in Honolulu on 28 September 1989; his family later returned to the Philippines and to politics.

The role of the United States

The Philippines had been an American colony until 1946 and remained a close ally, hosting Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, two of the largest US military installations abroad. For most of his rule Marcos enjoyed American support as a Cold War partner, and President Ronald Reagan was personally sympathetic to him.

That support weakened after Ninoy Aquino’s murder and as reports of fraud in the snap election mounted. An official American observer delegation, led by Senator Richard Lugar, reported serious irregularities. During the EDSA crisis the Reagan administration warned Marcos against using force, and on 25 February Senator Paul Laxalt, a close friend of Reagan, told Marcos by telephone that he should leave cleanly. Washington then arranged his departure.

Myths and facts

The revolution is often described as entirely bloodless. The four days at EDSA were indeed remarkably peaceful, but the election campaign before it saw dozens of politically motivated killings, among them the murder of the former provincial governor Evelio Javier in Antique on 11 February 1986. It is also sometimes presented as a purely civilian uprising; in reality the defection of Enrile, Ramos and part of the armed forces was decisive, and the crowds’ protection of those soldiers was what made it possible.

Timeline

• 1972, 21 September: Marcos places the Philippines under martial law.
• 1983, 21 August: Benigno Aquino Jr. is assassinated at Manila airport.
• 1986, 7 February: Snap presidential election.
• 1986, 9 February: COMELEC tabulators walk out in protest.
• 1986, 22 February: Enrile and Ramos break with Marcos; Cardinal Sin calls people to EDSA.
• 1986, 24 February: Military units defect; crowds stop government troops.
• 1986, 25 February: Aquino and Marcos are both sworn in; Marcos flees that night.
• 1987, 2 February: Voters approve a new constitution.

Why it matters

The People Power Revolution showed that a determined, peaceful crowd, combined with defections in the armed forces, could bring down an entrenched ruler. Its name and methods were taken up in later movements across Asia and beyond, from the 8888 Uprising in Burma to Eastern Europe in 1989. In the Philippines its anniversary is marked every 25 February, and its meaning, like the legacy of the Marcos era, is still debated forty years on, decades after the country’s independence in 1946.