In 1986, I was but a little child. My mom took to EDSA on the first day of that historic People Power Revolution. I remember only a few details. One, the first day was okay, but my mom left after that and fled to our ancestral province of Pampanga, where we waited out the events in case the demonstrations turned for the worse. I don’t blame her for fleeing.

I went to school in La Salle GreenHills; it was there that the NAMFREL count that exposed the corruption of the 1986 election was held. To this day, the blackboard that held that tally remains preserved at my school’s gymnasium.

I grew up with reminders of hard-earned national freedom. In my third year of high school we read Dekada ’70, a harrowing, realistic depiction of the darkest days of the Marcos era. We compared our national experience with the events of Tiananmen square. By the time I was 20 years old, I was one of the people who were on the streets calling for Estrada’s expulsion from office.

It is this background that has made me sympathetic to popular, (relatively) peaceful revolutions such as the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004, Lebanese Cedar Revolution of 2005 and the Kyrgyz Tulip Revolution. Egypt, however, is quickly descending into madness when what is needed is the leadership of our country to provide the necessary impetus to tip Egypt in the right direction.

Egypt is personal to me, because I cannot imagine being an Egyptian whose revolution is suppressed by an American-propped dictator, with goons hired with American money, armed with American guns. What if, in 1986, the interests of the United States were such that it needed the tyrant Marcos to stay in office? Would they have supplied him with material aid to suppress a demonstration of millions? You’ll excuse me, then, if I do not toe the anti-Islamicist line on this matter. There are far more important things than worrying about outcomes. We have to pay for realities first.