Today, we join the majority of the people watch a drama unfolding in the streets of Makati. Young officers and soldiers have staked their lives to express their disgust with the military and government leadership under the command of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They have exposed a list of issues that eclipse any pronouncement that GMA plans to make in the SONA presentation to the Philippine Congress tomorrow.

We do not advocate military mutiny that is independent of democratic peoples struggles as the manner by which to pursue the quest for social justice and transformation. However, we cannot help but be sympathetic to the issues that the young officers and soldiers are raising. Today was the day that we were supposed to hold our own Peoples Tribunal to express the peoples charges against the GMA administration for violating the basic rights of the Filipino people and betraying the mandate and public trust it claims to possess.

We hear now the condemnation of the military mutiny expressed by GMA and members of her cabinet calling the actions of the mutineers unlawful, unconstitutional and bordering on terrorism, emphasizing the legitimacy of the current government as having been borne out of the peoples democratic actions of EDSA 1 and EDSA 2. May we point out the irony of such statements, and remind GMA and its officials what in their haste to isolate the mutineers they may have forgotten that EDSA 1 was triggered by a similar military mutiny, that EDSA 2 was sealed by a similar withdrawal of military support from the incumbent government, that both EDSAs were not hampered by the constraints of official interpretation of law and the constitution.

We also hear the calls of various groups to defend democracyand come out to give a show of support for the GMA administration. They seem to think we have forgotten how this administration ordered military troops to invade Pikit, supported the US war against Iraq, swept poor vendors off the streets of Manila without regard for their livelihoods and right to due process, time and again took the side of big business in the power and water industry, and implemented other policies and actions contrary to the interests of the majority of the people and of the nation as a whole.

The important lessons from EDSA 1 and EDSA 2 that the GMA administration and the forces calling for her defense seem to consciously ignore are these: that the people and history will be the ultimate judge of the legitimacy and illegitimacy of any government, that genuine and lasting social transformation cannot be achieved overnight or through shortcuts, that without the painstaking empowerment of people through organizing and democratic struggles, elite vested interests will time and again exploit legitimate uprisings and wrest victories for themselves.

These are lessons we hope the military mutineers know and take to heart: their frustrations may be justified, but in the end their actions will be judged according to how they have placed themselves in the service of the democratic aspirations and struggles of peoples movements and not the other way around.

All progressive and democratic forces are now challenged to cease being spectators and actively intervene in this current conjuncture. Not to be supporting actors to those who currently hold center stage but to express our own calls and positions and let our voices be heard.