Feb 222013
 
This year, Malacañang is taking the commemoration of the first EDSA Revolution into the digital age.

Using the hashtag #EDSA27, the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) will be tweeting the events of the four-day protest to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos as if it were happening today.

“The PCDSPO will be tweeting the events of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution as they happened, based on the compiled timeline of Angela Stuart Santiago,” deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said in a statement Friday.

The peaceful revolt installed to power President Benigno Aquino III’s mother, the late President Corazon “Cory” Aquino, and ended the decades-long Marcos dictatorship.

This year’s celebration aims to highlight the role of “other EDSA’s” or the main roads of Baguio, Iloilo, and Davao “which contributed in their own way to overthrow an oppressive regime and restore democracy,” said Valte.

Valte said they plan to do this by showcasing online Kidlat Tahimik’s semi-autobiographical film “Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow?” Tahimik, also known as Eric de Guia, is a multi-awarded Filipino filmmaker who received the 2012 Fukuoka Prize for arts and culture.

“We are making available online a portion of his film featuring the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, and simultaneous uprisings in key landmarks of Baguio City,” she said.

Additional celebrations to commemorate the People Power Revolution include the superimposition of the iconic map used by Marcos and General Fabian Ver to plan out their attack on Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo onto a current aerial photograph of the area, and the publishing of liner notes on the music of the People Power Revolution.

A re-enactment of the “Salubungan” will also be held simultaneously in Manila, Virac, Dumaguete and Zamboanga on February 25, celebrating the unity between nearly all sectors of country to overthrow Marcos.

New Human Rights law

Meanwhile, Malacañang also announced that President Aquino will lead EDSA celebrations at the People Power Monument where he is expected to sign the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013.

The law will create the Human Rights Violations Victim’s Memorial Commission, while formally recognizing the ill acts committed by the Marcos administration against its own people, a statement from the EDSA People Power Commission

The new law will also compel the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to teach the events of the Marcos dictatorship in the classroom.

“[We need to] educate young people about the abuses committed by the Marcos regime and the heroism by those who opposed it,” the commission said. — KBK, GMA News