It is that time in February when jaundiced politics (in an election period) may overstate its messianic role in toppling a Regime, single handedly restoring democracy, as basis of a new Filipina saint, with her genes transferable to an aspiring son who claims no stain in the “yellow magic,” plus the promise not to steal?

But where would “Edsa One” be without the daring Enrile planned armed revolt? And the public call of then Cardinal Sin for people power? For at a time the nation needed a Joan of Arc, the Yellow lady was not in Edsa, at the thick of the fight, when leadership was most needed. It would have been a protracted, even asymmetrical, effort with the objective of toppling a dictatorship uninsured, Where would the breast beaten “Yellow Magic” be without Ninoy Aquino’s martyrdom? And of Doy Laurel’s 6-year libertarian struggle leading the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) in the dark days? Or of the late Teng Puyat who principally convinced Doy and Cory to join forces in his home in New Manila, only to be disappointed, and forming the opposition Senatorial ticket of the Grand Alliance for Democracy (GAD) in 1987 to contest the Cory Government.

Allegedly Ninoy would write Puyat for financial help back during his incarceration. And yet the family owned Manila Bank was closed during the Aquino Administration. Without said personalities and events, perhaps a housewife would have known her proper place in history, unadorned, merely grieving on a moral pedestal but with no organized opposition party to decimate & no political victory.

The “Report Card” of Edsa One and the stainless Yellow Magic is best understood in the words of Vice President Doy Laurel in a letter to President Cory (13 August 1988): “And the painful truth is that the nation has gone from bad to worse -- the ‘new moral order’ we were solemnly committed has been perverted. It has become a haven for assassins and a den of thieves. Corruption, culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of the public trust and other high crimes have been laid at your door! We promised our people morality and decency in government. What do we have instead? The very opposite. It is now openly admitted by many including your former Solicitor-general and some of your own relatives in Congress, that the stench of ‘accumulated garbageâ’ to quote your own first cousin, Congressman Egmidio Tanjuatco Jr. ‘rises to high heaven; that the last years of Marcos are now beginning to look no worse than your first 2 years in office. And the reported controversies and scandals involving your closest relatives have become the objects of our people’s outrage” -- e.g. 1989 attempted sale of the Roppongi Property in Tokyo by Kamag-anak Inc. but challenged by Doy Laurel. The Supreme Court supported Laurel and permanently prohibited the attempted sale of the Executive Department, without the permission of Congress.

In terms of governance, according to Cecilio Arillo’s Greed & Betrayal, the Aquino Bureaucracy swelled to 1.6M employees from Marcos’ 900,000 plantilla positions, with government budget for personnel services in 1986 of P22.6B growing to P74B in 1991; there were 34 Cabinet Secretaries, 188 Undersecretaries, 900 Assistant Secretaries in the Aquino Cabinet. It was the biggest Cabinet in Asia and probably the world. Plus brown-outs, insurgency worsening etc.