(Note: I wrote this blog days after Cory Aquino died in August 1, 2009. I was in Hong Kong when she died and ended up signing the condolence book at the Philippine Consulate. In the last night of her wake, my friends and I attempted to have a final glimpse of her – but we never made it. The events that unfolded following her death, leading up to her son, Noynoy Aquino’s candidacy, are not reflected in this blog.)
I don’t want to speak of Cory Aquino in the past tense. To do so is almost tantamount to thinking that she has already passed on, ready to be forgotten, like a ray of sun dipping fast in the horizon.
The grief that many of us felt over her death, especially those of my generation, seems to be a grief over our own inaction, our own inability to sustain the activism we started in EDSA. Or, for those of us who are somehow still “at it”, i.e., engaging in various causes that endeavor to change world, it was grief at our own fatigue and collective disenchantment.
I was 18 years old when EDSA happened. As a student in Ateneo, I took part in a few political actions leading to that momentous event (see my other blog entry).
Who was Cory to me, then?
First, we called her Tita Cory. Before she had the “audacity” to challenge Ferdinand Marcos for the Philippine presidency, she was “but” the widow of the slain oppositionist, Ninoy Aquino. With permanently arched eyebrows, yellow-rimmed spectacles, and soft-spoken colegiala accent, she intrepidly plunged into the murky world of electoral politics. She was the first and perhaps the only president I ardently campaigned for (other than Jovito Salonga in 2002). I planted my activist roots the moment she declared her intention to run in the snap elections in 1986. Her candidacy, sneered at by many, however signaled to the world (and even to the skeptics) that another (post-Marcos) world was possible. Indeed, she was the primary icon of my youth – a smiling yellow beacon at a time of turmoil and darkness. This is not to say that I do not recognize and give tribute to those who came before her – those who sacrificed their youth and shed their own blood – eons before the sweet flavor of democracy started wafting through the changing political air.
This is not to say that she did not disenchant me: her inaction on agrarian reform that precipitated the Mendiola massacre; her affirmative vote on the US bases treaty; her passing off the opportunity to ask for debt relief from the IMF and WB for the onerous loans contracted under the Marcos regime; her conservative stance on the Family Code; and, cozy closeness with the Catholic church hierarchy, among others. She survived six coup attempts, including a very bloody one, in which her own son was shot. She was an indulgent mother to a media-hound daughter whose colorful private life became intermittent fodder for public news – till today.
Despite her failings, Tita Cory facilitated the restoration of political democracy. It was during her time when civil society organizations flourished and became recognized as a third force of democracy. She inspired people with her simplicity, strength of character and unflinching moral conviction. She was at best, a transition president who knew when it was time to move on and transfer the reins of power onto the next president.
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