Why EDSA didn’t work

On the third decade after the EDSA People Power Revolution drove out dictator Ferdinand Marcos on February 25, 1986, articles commemorating and commenting upon the four-day largely bloodless resotration of Philippine democracy invariably ask: Why is the country still a mess?

The question is wrong-headed, of course. There is no way a single event can fix everything wrong with a nation, especially since EDSA was never intended to address all major problems afflicting the Philippines. Rather, it was supposed to fix just one: the lack of a president with popular support and democratic legitimacy.