People Power Movement

People Power Movement, four-day protest in 1986 in Manila, that forced Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos into exile and ended his 14-year dictatorship of the Republic of the Philippines. Although worldwide coverage of the event portrayed it as a spontaneous uprising, its origins lay in years of rising resentments among military officers and growing protests by Manila’s middle class. Benigno Aquino (“Ninoy” Aquino) was the chief opposition leader in the Philippine Senate when Marcos declared martial law in 1972. He was imprisoned until 1980 and then went into political exile in the United States. Aquino flew back to the Philippines in 1983, but his military escort shot him in the back of the head as he stepped from the aircraft. The brutal assassination made him an instant martyr to those opposed to the Marcos regime. Many among the millions who attended his funeral procession later joined opposition groups to campaign for the restoration of democracy.

As the economy collapsed, President Marcos tried to win a new mandate by calling an unscheduled election for February 1986. Although deeply divided, the opposition united behind the candidacy of Ninoy’s widow, Corazon Aquino, who proved to be a dedicated campaigner. Simultaneously, a military faction headed by Marcos’s ambitious defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, began plotting a coup d’état.

Reports that Marcos won the February election by fraud prompted Enrile’s loyal colonels to launch their coup. They staged a mutiny with just 750 soldiers at two military camps in Manila. General Fidel Valdez Ramos, chief of the Philippine Constabulary (now the Philippine National Police), joined Enrile’s revolt and inspired defections among key units. When a million citizens formed human barricades around the camps, Marcos’s troops refused to fire on unarmed civilians. After four days of “people power,” as the citizen revolt became known, Marcos fled to Hawaii and Corazon Aquino took office as the new president.