Forty years ago this month, an estimated 1 million Filipinos took to the streets of Manila to topple an obdurate dictator and added a new term to the lexicon of popular protest: “People Power.”
Anger had been building against President Ferdinand Marcos following a “snap” election he tried to steal. When his defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, and armed forces chief of staff, Fidel V. Ramos, joined the opposition and holed themselves up in two military camps, Marcos ordered them arrested. But following a call from the influential archbishop of Manila, a million people armed only with flowers, rosary beads and prayers surrounded the camps. Marcos’s commanders, confronted with throngs of nuns, priests and ordinary civilians pleading, weeping and kneeling in prayer, refused orders to open fire and clear the streets, and Marcos subsequently fled to exile in Hawaii.
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