25/02/2026
꧁ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐘𝐈𝐄𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄 ꧂ : 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭’𝐬 𝐄𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟔 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐔𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠
꧁ Forty years after the events of February 25, 1986, the 40th anniversary of the People Power Uprising finds the Philippines still grappling with the complex historical forces that converged on the streets of Manila. On that day, millions of ordinary citizens formed a human barrier along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) between Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, ultimately compelling the flight of Ferdinand Marcos and his family into exile. Within this historic moment, progressive peoples’ organizations leaned towards the achievement of national democracy (ND) in the country—anchored in militant mass-based formations such as Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), GABRIELA National Alliance of Women, League of Filipino Students (LFS), among others —occupied a distinct and often under-acknowledged position.
While the moderate “Yellow” opposition centered its efforts on EDSA itself, ND forces concentrated their pressure at Mendiola Bridge and the approaches to Malacañang Palace. They viewed the uprising not as the triumphant conclusion of a democratic transition but as an incomplete opening salvo in a longer national democratic revolution. This perspective has defined the movement’s legacy: a continuous thread of ideological consistency, tactical adaptability, and unyielding critique of elite restoration, even as the country has experienced successive waves of political betrayal and repression.
The ideological foundations of the ND movement trace back to the radical ferment of the late 1960s. Emerging amid widespread nationalist awakening and opposition to persistent U.S. neocolonial influence, feudal land relations, and bureaucrat capitalism—the “three basic problems” identified in the theory of national democracy—the political leanings of the movement aligned with the principal tenets upon which the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was re-established in 1968 with the leadership of Jose Maria Sison. The New People’s Army (NPA) was formed the following year, and the National Democratic Front (NDF) was constituted in 1973 as a broad united-front organization.
During the Marcos martial-law period (1972–1986), the ND forces became the most organized and resilient underground and aboveground organizations resisting dictatorship. Thousands of students, workers, peasants, and progressive clergy joined its ranks, enduring systematic arrests, torture, and enforced disappearances. Underground study circles and mass organizations operated under conditions of extreme danger yet sustained a coherent analysis that framed Marcos as the local embodiment of imperialism and feudalism rather than an isolated aberration.
By the mid-1980s, economic collapse, the 1983 assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., and the fraudulent snap elections of February 7, 1986, created the objective conditions for mass upheaval. Consistent with its analysis of the elections as an elite-managed contest, the ND movement boycotted the polls. When the military defection of Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel V. Ramos triggered the uprising on February 22, ND formations moved swiftly. They secured strategic sites such as government television Channel 4, sustained the “Welgang Bayan” (People’s Strike) at Mendiola and Nagtahan, and directly confronted loyalist forces guarding Malacañang.
These actions, though less visible in mainstream media than the EDSA encampment, exerted decisive pressure on the regime’s center of power. ND banners explicitly demanded not merely Marcos’s removal but comprehensive land reform, national industrialization, and the dismantling of U.S. military bases—demands that distinguished the movement from the more limited restorationist agenda of the moderate opposition. The post-EDSA period rapidly validated the ND critique. The Corazon Aquino administration, while restoring formal democratic institutions and dismantling certain Marcos-era instruments of repression, represented in ND analysis a return to elite rule rather than a fundamental rupture with the old social order. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) proved largely ineffectual, preserving landlord dominance and leaving millions of peasant families in debt and tenancy. Economic policy shifted toward neoliberal globalization—trade liberalization, privatization, and debt servicing—exacerbating inequality and foreign economic dominance.
In response, ND-led organizations mobilized large-scale campaigns: the successful drive to terminate the U.S. military bases agreement in 1992, opposition to the Philippines’ entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) under the Ramos presidency, and participation in the coalition that contributed to Joseph Estrada’s ouster in the second EDSA uprising of 2001. Each campaign underscored the movement’s assessment that the 1986 transition had merely reconfigured rather than dismantled the structures of exploitation.
Concurrently, the ND movement pursued a dual strategy of extra-parliamentary mass struggle and electoral participation. The 1987 Constitution’s party-list system, itself an indirect outcome of the People Power dynamic, provided an opening. Organizations such as Bayan Muna, Gabriela Women’s Party, Anakpawis and Kabataan entered Congress in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Figures including Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza utilized the legislative platform to advance bills on women’s rights, labor protections, indigenous peoples’ land rights, and human rights accountability.
These parliamentary interventions produced tangible, albeit limited, gains—such as strengthened anti-violence against women legislation and wage-increase campaigns led by KMU affiliates—while simultaneously exposing the structural constraints of elite-dominated institutions.
Yet every advance met intensified state repression. Successive administrations from Gloria Macapagal Arroyo through Rodrigo Duterte weaponized “red tagging,” legal harassment, and extrajudicial killings. The 2017 designation of the CPP-NPA-NDF as terrorist organizations under the Anti-Terrorism Act accelerated this pattern. Landmark atrocities—the 2009 Maguindanao massacre and the thousands killed in Duterte’s drug war—echoed the brutality of the Marcos era, with ND activists disproportionately targeted. The emotional and human cost has been immense: generations of cadres lost, families shattered, and communities traumatized. Nevertheless, these setbacks have repeatedly catalyzed new waves of youth radicalization and mass mobilization.
This year 2026, under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—marked by historical revisionism, social-media-driven disinformation, and renewed dynastic consolidation—the ND movement remains a vital counter-hegemonic force. Protests against charter-change attempts, political dynasties, and the Philippines’ deepening entanglement in U.S.-China geopolitical tensions draw directly from ND analytical frameworks. The Makabayan bloc in Congress continues to challenge policies that sustain poverty rates above 20 percent and extreme wealth concentration in the hands of the top 1 percent. Recent labor strikes against inflation and the intermittent resumption of NDF peace negotiations further demonstrate the movement’s tactical vitality and ideological coherence.
The legacy of the ND movement is therefore not merely historical but profoundly contemporary. It embodies a tradition of collective memory that refuses to romanticize 1986 as a completed democratic miracle. For those who lived through the dictatorship and the uprising, it preserves the warmth of solidarity forged in danger and the sharp disappointment of unfulfilled promises—꧁ —untitled lands, persistently low wages, compromised sovereignty. For younger generations born after 1986, it offers an educational counter-narrative: proof that ordinary people can topple dictators, yet also a warning that formal democracy without structural transformation remains fragile and reversible.
As former Bayan Muna Partylist representative and current chairman Teddy Casiño observed in a recent public statement, “𝑯𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊 𝒑𝒂 𝒈𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒑 𝒂𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒚𝒐𝒏. 𝑯𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊 𝒑𝒂 𝒕𝒂𝒑𝒐𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒈 𝒍𝒂𝒃𝒂𝒏.” (The revolution is not yet complete. The struggle is not yet over.)
Ultimately, the ND movement’s four-decade trajectory since EDSA reveals an unquenchable flame of resistance. Its refusal to accept partial victories, its capacity to adapt tactics without abandoning core principles, and its persistent linkage of national sovereignty with social justice continue to illuminate the path toward a more substantive democracy.
In the commemorations unfolding today across Quezon City and beyond—where music, militancy, and memory intertwine—the legacy of the National Democratic movement stands as both a historical reckoning and a living summons: 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆’𝒔 𝒑𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒖𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒛𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏. ꧂
