The Curious Cases of Philippine Civil Society and Decentralization 159 As a civil society leader (Karaos 2011) explains, the division among CSOs at that time reflected the “differentiation of the hierarchy of values among CSO groups and personalities,” with some groups and personalities calling for former President Arroyo's immediate resignation while other CSOs, once again wary of the competence of her replacement, urge for a “greater respect for plurality of opinion.” For this civil society leader, the “crisis” within civil society in 2005 showed how uncomfortable CSOs are with major differences of opinion within its own ranks. A more fundamental question she raised, was a divergence in views among civil society leaders on whether people power, in the two cases above, to compel an elected leader to vacate the post by exerting pressure through protests, strengthens or weakens “democracy.” From our perspective, the last question deserves attention but should be rephrased. It is not a question of whether popular protests, or what has generally been referred to as “people power”, deepens or is inimical to democracy. As this book argues, it is far too romantic to conceive of our political system as democratic and it is much more precise to examine whether the system is continually democratizing. In this regard, the question should be whether people power facilitates or impedes democratization? To answer this question we can refer back to our earlier discussion on the public good that civil society is expected to push for—specifically the accountability of public officials. In securing such accountability, civil society harnesses its power to ensure that institutional processes that secure such accountability would be fully put into effect. The preference to work with institutional processes, be it through elections or the process of impeachment, is aligned with the goal of strengthening the rule of law, a condition that makes for much more stable democratic order. It is only when the institutional processes clearly fail that civil society should take on an extra-institutional mode of securing accountability, through people power. This two-stage process was clearly seen in the days prior to the first people power mobilization in 1986. This process was not the case in the second people power event of 2001, now commonly referred to as EDSA Dos. EDSA Dos, the popular mobilization that started in the evening of January 16, 2001 and culminated with the swearing-in of then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as president on January 20, 2001, abbreviated an institutional process that should have been allowed to proceed to test what an Associate Justice referred to as the “constitutional maturity” (Gatmaytan 2006) of the country. While the outcome of the impeachment process against former President Joseph Estrada, on hindsight, could not be predicted, what is unmistakable is that the process was historic inasmuch as it was the first