ABSTRACT
World attention has long since shifted away from the peaceful overthrow of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines in February 1986. Filipino “people power” had a demonstration effect on other popular uprisings in Asia, particularly in Burma, China, Pakistan and South Korea in the late 1980s as well as in Indonesia in 1998.1
The non-violent 1989 democratic revolutions of Eastern Europe (and a year later in Nepal) were sometimes referred to as “people power.”But few of the actors or observers appeared to be aware that the origin of the phrase was the peaceful revolt in the Philippines.2 The Philippines soon returned to its status as a minor “Third World” country of which the Western world, to paraphrase Chamberlain, “knows nothing.”
