Opinion: Beyond EDSA at 40 and Marcos Apologia—a Call to Redeem the Legacy of Malolos, 1899
To make Filipinos more Filipino, we must revive the courage, foresight, and independence of our ancestors at Malolos, 1899.
Published on Feb 27, 2026
My stance on EDSA 1986 and the Marcos dictatorship has been consistent throughout. I find this dichotomy stale, exhausted, and—above all—bankrupt, bereft of any energy that can be productive. What do I mean by this?
By principle, I do not only reject the glorification of EDSA or Marcos nostalgia. I practically do not consider the Constitutions of 1935, 1943, 1973, and 1987 as viable frameworks for our nationhood, or ng ating pagkabansa, in Filipino. I will always claim that these documents are penned, argued, and implemented either under foreign duress or sponsorship. That alone proves that their fundamentals are brittle from the start, and from the standpoint of pragmatism, they are all grafted and implemented with the assumption that they are resistant to revisions and amendments, thus effectively preserving these documents in amber, and, in turn, are prone to accumulating cobwebs rather than wisdom.
Instead, I proudly affirm the legacies of 1872, 1896, 1898, and 1901. The martyrdom of Gomburza, Jacinto's fury, Mabini's foresight, and Don Belong's Union Obrera Democratic Filipina. I uphold the 1899 Charter of Malolos as the only piece of statecraft that we have so far, furnished from our own hands, from our own intellect, and from our own predicaments.
For one, the Malolos Republic, while never able to mature fully in peacetime, as it was only de facto established on 23 January 1899, exactly two weeks before the war with America broke out, is ironically more advanced, neat, and organized than the present structure of our government. It is a full parliamentary system, which means that the Legislature, which embodies the people's will, is ascendant over the Courts, the President, and the Prime Minister (known then as the President of the Government, a title that still exists in Spain and Italy at this present hour). Both offices and branches, executive and judicial, still exist, yet the Assembly can dismiss them when they no longer fulfill their roles and have failed their mandates, since it is the Assembly that appoints them. It also contains provisions that allow foreigners to contribute their talents to the country by exercising their own professions, and a strict separation of the Church and the State, the latter almost not passing had it not been for Antonio Luna's intervention on the side of the pros.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But is it a useful launchpad for a sociopolitical initiative to make the Filipinos more Filipino once more? Absolutely. For all the political currents as we speak either point to outside, be they towards Anglo-America or to Scandinavia, or to regional and provincial bailiwicks, for their guidance. As such, both take our statehood, as ramshackle, sputtering, and hole-ridden as it is, for granted. Both are indecisive, reluctant, and sterile to forward a virile alternative, which speaks to their limitations and their barrenness as paradigms if we are to pursue the journey toward a better day.
For any commitment to genuine and lasting transformation is tantamount to an act of revelation, or the renovation of the world in fire. The road towards this initiative will always be paved by rediscovering a deep past, more profound and sublime than our dismal present, as the Americans did in 1776, the French in 1789, the Russians in 1917, the Chinese in 1949, the Cubans in 1959, and the Vietnamese in 1975, to name a few. By doing so, we likewise redeem whatever is positive of 1935, 1943, 1973, and 1987.
In this vein, to be a genuine revolutionary or reformist is to be a conservative, in the sense that your goal is to rekindle what has been dimmed. By contrast, many who parrot themselves as today’s conservatives, whether they want to admit it or not, mirror the progressives that they despise more than anyone else. For these conservatives mistake the form as content, the appearance of a thing as its substance. As a result, they simply want to freeze the moment in amber, the immediate tradition, instead of digging deeper into why that tradition has corroded beyond recognition.
What, then, is the goal that must be in place for the still-committed patriots to the nation, regardless of one’s background—be it sexuality, religion, gender, or social status? It is to build a state with vision, cohesion, and purpose that will secure our place in the sun: a home worthy of our ancestors' sacrifices and of those who will inherit its mantle, and, above all, a country that can stand on its own against all odds for decades to come, amidst the gathering storm. And this is the hill that I will gladly die on.