A young interviewer from one news program asked me if the signature yellow color of EDSA 1 came about because of the confetti made from shredded Yellow Pages that were thrown from the high-rise buildings of Makati. Although I wanted to laugh-out-loud, I patiently told him that the color motif came from the yellow ribbons that were tied around trees to welcome the return of Ninoy Aquino from exile in 1983. The inspiration came from the song “Tie a yellow ribbon.” In slight sing-song, since I can’t carry a tune, I recited the first line: “Tie a yellow ribbon in the old oak tree…” I had hoped he would get the point but there was no sparkle in his eyes to show he understood. Then I realized he doesn’t know the song.

The young man half-apologetically, how-jokingly said: “Sorry po, I was born in October 1986. So when EDSA 1 happened, I was only a zygote.”

Oh, well. While age can be an excuse, this and many other young reporters I’ve encountered could use a little more resourcefulness. A brief search in the Internet will lead them to several entries alluding to, if not fully explaining, the significance of the color yellow in the series of amazing events that began with Ninoy’s assassination on 21 August 1983, followed by the snap election on 7 February 1986, the protests against massive election cheating, the mutiny in the ranks of the Armed Forces, the four-day massing up along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, and the forced exile of the Marcoses in the evening of 25 February.

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The Philippines was one of almost 100 countries that exited from an authoritarian regime in the last quarter of the 20th century. The transition towards what was trumpeted as democracy ushered a whole set of studies around the notion of “democratic transitions”. An academic field called “transitology” emerged, looking not only at what made the numerous and diverse transitions possible, but also at the developments and reforms that can eventually lead to democratic consolidation.

When we crossed over to the next century, doubts began to emerge on the optimism generated by the so-called third-wave of democracy that had swept Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Thomas Carothers, in a 2002 article in the Journal of Democracy entitled “The End of the Transition Paradigm” questioned many of the core assumptions of the transitologists. He raised doubts as to whether in fact any shift from authoritarian rule can be considered a transition, or a mere political change without the promise of liberal democracy in the offing. He wisely observed that the over-emphasis on regular elections and the elites as determinants of the transition process unduly downplayed the structural conditions that made reform of the dysfunctional states difficult in the succeeding decades.

Instead of transiting to democracy, Carothers said that most of these countries moved towards one of two syndromes. He called one syndrome the “dominant-power politics,” a situation where only one party, group or person dominates the system despite the presence of opposition groups.

But it is the other syndrome which he called “feckless pluralism” that applies to us.

According to Carothers, “Countries whose political life is marked by feckless pluralism tend to have significant amounts of political freedom, regular elections, and alternation of power between genuinely different political groupings. Despite these positive features, however, democracy remains shallow and troubled. Political participation, through broad at election time, extends little beyond voting. Political elites from all the major parties or groupings are widely perceived as corrupt, self-interested, dishonest and not serious about working for their country. The public is seriously disaffected from politics, and while it may still cling to a belief in the ideal of democracy, it is extremely unhappy about the political life of the country.”

The description fits us almost to a T. The only qualifier I can make is that political participation in our country is at least more expansive, what with all the active interest groups and vibrant media engaging all sections and levels of government. But this qualification does not negate the overall fecklessness of our situation.

Carothers concluded that most of the approximately 100 countries that were lauded for entering into democratic transitions have been stuck in some political gray zone. A political gray zone, wrote Carothers, “suffers from serious democratic deficits, often including… frequent abuse of the law by government officials, elections of uncertain legitimacy, very low levels of public confidence in state institutions, and persistently poor institutional performance of the state.”

This gray zone-state is not necessarily a way station to something else. Either syndrome can be somewhat stable; countries cannot easily move out of them. It can actually be their normal state for decades to come. Feckless pluralism “achieves its own dysfunctional equilibrium – the passing of power back and forth between competing elites who are largely isolated from the citizenry but willing to play by widely accepted rules.”

The notion of a gray zone provides a more realistic appraisal of where we’ve landed. Gray is a duller color than yellow. Its drabness reflects how the promise of EDSA 1 transition has been waylaid by powerful forces, one generation after.

Gray confetti, anyone?

E-mail: mcf178@yahoo.com