Second EDSA Revolution

Also known as: EDSA II — the common shorthand · EDSA Dos — the styling common in Philippine media · EDSA 2 — numeric variant · People Power II — the lineage claim from the 1986 revolution · EDSA Revolution of 2001 — the linked-data label

Government

Definition

The Second EDSA Revolution — EDSA II or EDSA Dos — was the four-day protest uprising of January 16–20, 2001 that removed Joseph Estrada from the presidency of the Philippines: triggered by the impeachment court’s 11–10 vote against opening a sealed bank envelope, powered by crowds at the EDSA Shrine, sealed by the withdrawal of military and police support on January 19 and by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.‘s administration of the presidential oath to Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on January 20, after which Estrada and his family left Malacañang. Participation was never officially counted: contemporaneous estimates compiled in the standard reference ran from about 100,000 (The Wall Street Journal; The Guardian) to “close to 2 million” (an Amnesty International account) — figures that differ by an order of magnitude. Its counter-image followed within months, when pro-Estrada rallyists — estimated in the same reference at 6,000 to 150,000 — marched on and attempted to storm Malacañang on May 1, 2001, the episode remembered as EDSA III. (Wikipedia)

The transition’s constitutional settlement came from the Supreme Court: in Estrada v. Desierto (G.R. Nos. 146710-15, March 2, 2001) the Court held that Estrada had constructively resigned, that Arroyo was the de jure President, and that a former president enjoys no immunity from criminal suit — the ruling that let the Ombudsman proceed to the April 4, 2001 plunder and perjury charges at the Sandiganbayan (Criminal Case No. 26558), ending in Estrada’s September 12, 2007 conviction for plunder — reclusión perpetua, forfeiture of the Velarde accounts and the Boracay Mansion, the first Philippine president convicted of that crime — and in President Arroyo’s pardon of October 25, 2007. (Wikipedia — Trial of Joseph Estrada) The ruling itself is treated in this wiki’s entry on Estrada v. Desierto; the present entry is the event.

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_EDSA_Revolution
Wikidata	Q1980316
DBpedia	https://dbpedia.org/page/Second_EDSA_Revolution
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/EDSA (the avenue’s name, used by ellipsis for the revolutions named for it)
Library of Congress Subject Headings	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

EDSA II — the common shorthand
EDSA Dos — the styling common in Philippine media
EDSA 2 — numeric variant
People Power II — the lineage claim from the 1986 revolution
EDSA Revolution of 2001 — the linked-data label

Examples and Analogies

A trial that emptied into the street: EDSA II began inside a courtroom — the impeachment trial’s rules fight over one sealed envelope — and ended outside it, the way a dammed river goes around a closed sluice gate: the walkout of January 16 was the water finding the new channel.
Four days, three levers: the uprising moved by pulleys still familiar from 1986 — the bishops’ call, the business district’s crowds, and above all the defection of the armed forces and police on January 19 — but its outcome was fixed less by the crowd than by the oath administered the next noon.
A constitutionalized revolution: within six weeks the Supreme Court converted the street transfer into legal succession — constructive resignation, de jure succession, no immunity — the case where people power was retrofitted into the Constitution’s own machinery.

Usage Scenarios

1. Researching the 2001 Transition

Historians work the causal chain from the October 2000 exposé through the aborted trial to the January oath and the March ruling — the country’s second extra-electoral transfer of the presidency and the standing comparison for every later succession crisis.

2. Teaching Impeachment against People Power

Constitutional-law courses use the episode to pair the two removal tracks: the Constitution’s own — impeachment before the Senate, the Chief Justice presiding, removal only upon conviction — and the extra-constitutional one the crowds supplied, the Vice President’s oath under Article VII’s succession provisions making the street result a lawful transfer. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)

3. Verifying Crowd Estimates and Chronology

Journalists and students practice source discipline on two contested quantities: crowd size, where attributable estimates range from about 100,000 to “close to 2 million,” and the envelope vote’s date, conventionally January 16, 2001 though the session ran past midnight — precision means citing the Court’s own dating.

Strategies

Build the timeline from the judicial record: the Supreme Court’s decision in the legitimacy cases carries its own “panorama of events” — the vote, the walkout, the shrine crowds, the withdrawal, the oath, the departure — a record-built chronology and the anchor for any reconstruction.
Separate the event from its adjudication: the uprising (January 16–20) and its legalization (March 2; the oath authority confirmed January 22) are distinct subjects — the impeachment, trial, and Estrada v. Desierto entries carry each in turn.
Attribute every number: no official count of the EDSA crowds exists; estimates must carry their estimators, and the pro-Estrada mobilization of May 1, 2001 is likewise known only through attributed ranges.
Read EDSA III as the control case: the May 1, 2001 siege of Malacañang — without the bishops, without the military’s defection, without a constitutional claimant waiting — shows by contrast what made January’s assembly a transfer of power rather than a riot.

Security and Safety Measures

Succession managed by adjudication: the noon oath of January 20, taken before crowds and cameras, fixed the succession in public view before resistance could organize, and the Court’s January 22 administrative matter confirmed the Chief Justice’s authority to administer it — the sequence credited with converting a collapsing executive into an orderly transfer.
No immunity after office: the constructive-resignation ruling stripped the removed president of tenure-based immunity and opened the Ombudsman’s investigation — the safeguard that a chief executive answers to the ordinary machinery of prosecution, vindicated in the 2007 conviction and closed by the 2007 pardon.
Peaceful assembly, negotiated exit: the four days produced no massacre; the withdrawal of support was announced publicly at the shrine, and the departing family left by boat on the Pasig under agreement rather than force — the de-escalation record both sides cite.
For researchers: the second envelope’s contents were examined only after the trial collapsed, and the document reportedly attributed the Velarde account to Jaime Dichaves — a fact to be dated February 2001, the after-the-fact record of the envelope, not evidence the impeachment court ever weighed.

Historical Context

The crisis began with the jueteng accusations of October 2000, when Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson publicly accused Estrada of being the “lord of all jueteng lords”; on November 13, 2000, Speaker Manuel Villar transmitted to the Senate articles of impeachment signed by 115 members of the House — more than the one-third the Constitution requires — without a plenary vote, on charges of graft and corrupt practices, betrayal of public trust, and culpable violation of the Constitution, with Chief Justice Davide presiding over the Senate court. The televised trial produced Clarissa Ocampo’s testimony that she watched Estrada sign the name “Jose Velarde”; on the evening of January 16, 2001, eleven senator-judges voted against opening the second, sealed envelope against ten for opening it, the House prosecutors walked out, and Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. resigned and left with nine opposition senators and the eleven prosecutors; when the envelope was finally opened the following month at Pimentel’s initiative, its document attributed the Velarde account to Jaime Dichaves. (Wikipedia — Impeachment of Joseph Estrada)

The Supreme Court’s own chronology then carries the uprising: the Senate court had been opened on November 20, 2000 with twenty-one senators sworn as judges, and “On December 7, the impeachment trial started”; after the January 16 vote against the envelope — alleged to document some ₱3.3 billion under the Velarde name — thousands assembled at the EDSA Shrine by midnight; on January 18 a ten-kilometer line of people holding lighted candles formed a human chain from the Ninoy Aquino monument to the shrine; on January 19, at 3:00 in the afternoon, General Angelo Reyes announced at the shrine that “we are withdrawing our support to this government,” with the national police chief following; and on January 20, “at about 12:00 noon,” Chief Justice Davide administered the oath to Arroyo as President, Estrada and his family leaving the palace at 2:30 that afternoon — the Court confirming that oath’s authority in its administrative matter of January 22. (LawPhil — Estrada v. Desierto)

Challenges and Controversies

The Vote and the Envelope

The 11–10 vote of January 16 remains the event’s hinge controversy: critics charged the eleven senator-judges with suppressing the decisive evidence of the “Jose Velarde” account, while defenders invoked the rights of a third-party depositor and the rules of the court; the envelope’s opening in February 2001 — yielding a document attributing the account to Jaime Dichaves — let both sides claim vindication.

People Power versus Impeachment

Whether a presidency may be ended by assembly rather than verdict is the standing debate EDSA II opened: the constitutional removal track had been engaged and was never completed, the Court supplied the doctrine of constructive resignation after the fact, and every later crisis argues whether January 2001 is a precedent to follow or a path to close.

Two People Powers, One Name

The counter-mobilization of the poor against the elite-led assembly — culminating in the May 1, 2001 siege of Malacañang — fixed the “EDSA III” label and its class critique: partisans of the second dismissed the third as a riot; partisans of the third asked why one crowd’s EDSA legitimized a presidency and the other’s earned arrest — a dispute about equivalence rather than facts.

Counting the Crowd

No official estimate exists; the attributable figures — roughly 100,000 in contemporaneous international press reporting, up to “close to 2 million” in one human-rights account — differ by a magnitude, and the choice among them is a rhetorical act that encyclopedic treatment must expose rather than repeat.