‘The tragedy of tragedies,' said Ninoy in 1983, shortly before his assassination, ‘is that only Marcos can bring us back to democracy.
Only Marcos. And I'll tell you why. Marcos is the only man today who can decree a clean and honest election'.[641]
Marcos did call an election in 1985; tellingly, he first announced it live via satellite on American television.[642] A response to US diplomatic pressure for liberal reforms, it was merely all for show.[643] A US Senator had advised him to do it ‘for American consumption’.[644] It was also for Filipino consumption.
Before the dictatorship, elections had legitimated political rule in the Philippines. Although marred by guns and goons these elections had been clean and honest enough.[645] The 1986 presidential elections pitting Marcos against Cory, however, was so ‘unparalleled in the fraudulence of their conduct' that the Roman Catholic clergy of the predominantly Roman Catholic country condemned it and urged ‘nonviolent struggle for justice’[646] Nine days later came the 1986 People Power Revolution. A sea of citizens wearing and waving yellow, Cory's campaign colour, swelled Metro Manila's main highway EDSA and faced off tanks and soldiers for four days until on the 25th of February 1986 mass military defections threw Marcos and his family into exile in Hawaii.[647]Luckily for Cory, her husband was not always right. She came in after the Revolution felled Marcos and completed her six-year term as President. But several groups did try to blow her out, the first of them (as Ninoy had predicted) within six months after her inauguration.[648] And one attempt her fledgling democracy barely survived.[649]
The 1987 Constitution helped. Its ratification was a top priority of Cory's cabinet, what with the coup attempts bringing home to them the urgent need to ballast democracy with a plebiscitary mandate from ‘We, the sovereign Filipino People’[650] Cory needed every ounce of legitimacy the Constitution gave to survive the most dangerous of these attempts, which had failed to attract the crucial citizen support the plotters miscalculated it would draw.[651]
The 1986 Revolution achieved the improbable: it begat a stable democracy. More than three decades after People Power the 1987 Constitution it mothered remains in force.
It has lived twice the mean lifespan of written constitutions, surviving numerous political crises and attempted abusive amendments.[652] However, it is also constantly under threat, perhaps as much so today as during Cory's presidency.[653]The causes, processes, substance, and implementation of the revolutionary 1987 Philippine Constitution throws instructive light on its remarkable endurance.[654] Continued remembrance of them is critical to sustaining its legitimacy.[655] Revisiting these causes, processes, substance, and implementation is therefore always a timely and timeless task. This chapter is one such revisitation.
Section I discusses the causes of the 1987 Philippine Constitution's enactment. Why did the country make the Constitution? What were the political, social, and economic factors that drove the constitution-making? Section II narrates its processes. How was the 1987 Constitution made? Who made it? How did the Filipino People participate in the constitution-making process? Section III sketches the substance. What are the substantive contents of the 1987 Constitution? What problems do these substantive provisions try to address? Section IV charts its implementation. How has the 1987 Constitution been implemented? What statutes have been enacted to implement it? Section V concludes with the revolutionary charter's hope for redemptive constitutionalism.
I.