Thread by @rapplerdotcom

NOW: Southeast Asian studies professor Leloy Claudio talks to @mlq3 on key events that led the Marcoses back to power. Watch this new episode of #BasaganNgTrip below and follow this thread for highlights. rappler.com/voices/basagan…

@mlq3 .@mlq3 says the story of the Marcos restoration started in 1992: The first and most significant [event] was that Imelda Marcos ran for president and so did Danding Cojuangco.

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@mlq3 .@mlq3: If the two of them had combined their votes, they would have achieved 28% which would have been enough to have won the presidency six years after the EDSA revolution.

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Claudio cites a study saying that even during Cory Aquino’s administration, Filipinos wanted ‘unity.’ According to the study from Ateneo-Social Weather Stations, 69% of Filipinos wanted Aquino to reach out to Marcos loyalists.

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.@mlq3: We have to go back to the snap elections. We often overlook the fact that the election itself…was a close election. And that therefore, the status quo as of 1986 was a…divided nation.

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.@mlq3: What EDSA did was thoroughly upset the balance of forces, which were in a sense, tied.

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.@mlq3 says that while the elections exposed how “clumsy” the Marcoses were about the cheating, “it still left the Marcoses knowing that they still have a strong base of support.”

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Claudio raises the perception during 1992 and onwards that pro-Marcos ideas are already “fringe ideas.” With the Aquino phenomenon at that time, Claudio says these ideas were “not enough to dent the national narrative.”

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.@mlq3 says the public should have to look at the dynamics that make a restoration possible: As the regime that replaced it faces its own crises, what was formerly unthinkable starts becoming possible.

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.@mlq3: What was created after EDSA was a democracy that may have been very close to what would have been achieved in 1972 if Martial Law hadn’t happened. It was a democracy that had gatekeepers.

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.@mlq3: These gatekeepers were fundamentally the Catholic Church, which could grant or remove the mandate of heaven. It was the military which would decide to prop up a gov’t or stand by and let it fall.

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.@mlq3: And civil society, media, the symbolic figures like the Aquinos who could also grant legitimacy or take it away from the government.

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.@mlq3: Whatever the case, each of the gatekeepers fell and were not able to have the effect they had in the past. #BasaganNgTrip

.@mlq3: At the same time, the logical conclusion started becoming, as one by one each of these gatekeepers fell by the wayside, the whole question of the legitimacy of who represented the “malasakit” aspect shifted.

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.@mlq3: The Marcoses were able to invest money, resources, and strategizing into the things that would flip the balance [such as] social media, which no one could have foreseen even 10 years ago.

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.@mlq3 and Claudio talk about how Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who became president as a result of EDSA 3, eventually developed disillusionment with EDSA.

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When Cory Aquino called for the resignation of GMA over the Hello Garci scandal, @mlq3 says “the pieces were supposed to fall in place.” But “the military and the Church chickened out, leaving [Aquino] exposed.”

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