First Quarter Storm 50th year remembered
First Quarter Storm 50th year remembered
By Max Santiago
ManilaToday.net
On weekends, most Filipinos usually spend time resting with their families. But the Sunday of January 26, 2020 was no ordinary Sunday. Hundreds of people gathered at the Bantayog ng Bayani grounds to commemorate a milestone in our nation’s history. It was the 50th anniversary of the First Quarter Storm or FQS.
The year 1970 was a time of crisis and unrest, with a tyrant in the making at the helm of government.
On January 26, 2020, then-president Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. delivered the annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) before congress. Marcos had just won his second term as president in what was dubbed ‘the dirtiest election in history’. Prices of basic commodities were skyrocketing. The youth, estimated at 50,000, gathered outside to protest the SONA. A group of youth activists threw a papier-mâché crocodile and black cardboard coffin just as Marcos was passing by. State agents, seeing this as a disrespect to their revered leader, retaliated violently against the unarmed crowd. Shots were fired and truncheons were used, injuring hundreds of students. In the months to follow, the nation’s capital would be rocked by colossal protests unprecedent in scale and intensity.
Today’s generation has no inkling about the First Quarter Storm. This is either a sad or challenging development.
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