It is understandable that the casualty (Erap) and the beneficiary (GMA) of the EDSA II People Power Revolt would like to forget its celebration this week.

Erap had called his ouster from power as the "death of democracy" and the Palace had called EDSA II a de facto "non-event" and justified its non-celebration as part of the "healing of wounds."

EDSA II, we beg to disagree, was an exercise of full democracy.

We must recognize, too, that part of the recent downgrading of our democracy to "partly free" by an impartial international watchdog was because of these acts of political expediency of a gradually isolated president (GMA) who wants to save her skin by pitiful acts flirting with a still extremely popular rival (Erap). She had to pardon a convicted plunderer Erap even before the ink had hardly dried on the historic conviction of the Sandiganbayan of a Big Fish (Erap), at last.

We suspect the Palace did not want to glorify the mode of removing presidents in 2001 - People Power - otherwise GMA would be hard put justifying her iron-hand in nipping in the bud all actions that can germinate into another EDSA uprising and remove her from the presidency.

In other words, EDSA II so GMA says was not good for the goose (Erap), so it cannot be good for the gander (GMA) which is really hypocritical double talk because GMA was the main beneficiary of EDSA II by her taking over the presidency.

Why not indeed celebrate EDSA II?

After all, because of that, the Courts were able to convict in 2007 a former president of this country of plunder through constitutional means in a well documented array of charges that had strong legal footings.

The Lower House earlier constitutionally impeached the president through clear preponderance of numbers under then Speaker Manny Villar. Eleven shameless senators sabotaged the due process by not allowing the opening of a damning evidence in the second envelop that enraged the nation into the streets.

The view of a crying senator Loren Legarda embracing a resigned senate president Nene Pimentel while a vile Tessie Oreta danced her obscene jig moved people to EDSA to protest the scandal.

A million people at EDSA and thousands about to move to Malacanang to bodily remove Erap from his seat of power spoke of the people's anger. The Great Cardinal Sin had refused overtures from Rome for the Catholic Church to remain mute and blind to the excesses of the Erap administration and threatened to resign as Archbishop if Rome insisted.

The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy blinked. The People Power II had church support.

Besides, the president could not function any longer as majority of his Cabinet resigned from their positions and the Armed Forces led by then Defense Secretary Orly Mercado and AFP Chief Angelo Reyes withdrew their support.

Reyes said he decided to cast his date with history knowing that the Left was approaching Manila to take advantage of the crisis and the right wing junta was about to plunge the country into the confusion and rule by force. He took the road of constitutional merit and then allowed the legitimately elected vice president GMA to take over.

The Supreme Court, thereafter, through Chief Justice Hilario Davide had ruled that Erap constructively resigned by leaving his domain physically at the Palace - together with tearful goodbyes to loyal palace subalterns.

The people, the government (Cabinet), military, the Congress, the church and the Judiciary had spoken with one voice: Erap had to go. His conviction six years later by the Sandiganbayan reaffirmed the reasons for the EDSA II uprising by declaring Erap guilty of two of the four charges of plunder and ordered him jailed.

In short, EDSA II has to be celebrated because the country moved within its constitutional prerogatives in declaring a president unfit for office. And for a brief moment showed that somehow democracy and the justice system in the Philippines was working with his conviction of plunder charges.

Most importantly, it has to be celebrated because the Youth who were generally absent in the EDSA I anti-Marcos revolt was conspicuously noisy in EDSA II - its youthful idealism blooming to the hilt.

That such youthful idealism was betrayed by the pathetic and atrocious record of the GMA government thereafter could only then make the situation even more pathetic.

Now the people - mostly the youth - has no other dream but to leave this God-forsaken country. The drove of 2,000 Filipinos daily being converted into OFWs and leaving the Motherland is the aftermath of this betrayal.

But still all these do not invalidate the fruits and spirit that made EDSA II possible.
Let's toast to EDSA II.