The people’s president
CORY AQUINO has faced many challenges in her life and she has always faced them head on. She’s had bad times before. Her presidency was plagued by both man-made and natural disasters (those debilitating coups, the great 1990 earthquake, Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption), but through it all she remained a person of courage and unwavering faith. It is one of the many personal traits that make her unlike any politician I know, and perhaps in the end, she was really never much of a politician, but more of a humanitarian. Looking at her life, in and out of politics, it is clear that she does not merely pay lip service to good values and to moral action. She lived these values. She represented the best of what we hoped for in our leaders.A lot of other leaders can learn from her. Unlike the current president whose political legitimacy remains elusive because of alleged electoral fraud, Cory’s legitimacy was never in doubt. She survived those persistent coup rumors and actual military coup attempts, particularly the worst of them in August 1987 and December 1989, because people believed in her presidency. Yes, even when she disappointed not a few of the citizens, those who wanted the Edsa revolution to be indeed more revolutionary, they still stood by her. Cory was their hero, the only one who could have rallied and unified the people against the dictator.
One of the real lessons in Cory’s presidential term is that democracy offers the best means of overcoming extremism. Restore faith in the elections commission and strengthen other political institutions, have a vibrant civil society, restore constitutional rights and freedoms, and you’ve got a chance of quelling military adventurism, communist and secessionist rebellion and what have you. At the heart of it all, democracy’s survival lies in the people’s conviction that their president and her administration is legitimate; that the power of the president comes from the people, not a case of the president of wielding the vast powers of her office to rule over a her people, which is what many accuse GMA of.
Ninoy Aquino, whose death woke the Filipino people from their apathetic stupor, used to say that Marcos would leave the country with so many problems, his successor would be lucky to last six months. Of course, how could he have known Cory his wife would be the one to succeed the dictator. Maybe, knowing his wife, he would have given her better chances.
Never underestimate a woman with resolve and a just cause. She has an enormous capacity to inspire, as she did and continues to inspire Filipino people, and the world.
Cory was Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year in 1987, among Time’s 20 Most Influential Asians of the 20th Century in its August 1999 issue, one of Time’s 65 Great Asian Heroes (along with Mahatma Gandhi, Lee Kuan Yew, Aung San Suu Kyi and King Bhumibol Adulyadej) in its November 2006 issue. She was once nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Price. She was the 2nd woman to give a keynote address to the US Congress (the first was Madame Chiang Kai-shek). There are so many other honors given to her by the international community that when she is criticized here by fellow Filipinos, it is somewhat like a prophet not being accepted in her own land. She was adored and still is by the world.
Perhaps the Filipino people just expected too much of Cory. She was after all mythical—the devout housewife of a fallen hero who took up the cudgels and ousted the dictator without a drop of blood. How could what happened next (the real nitty-gritty of governance with all the confusing noisy politics and all the problems) top that? Edsa was a miracle. Perhaps we forgot that people worked hard to make that miracle happen. It is not just God’s and it is not just one woman’s inspiration alone. And if we expected true-blue socio economic emancipation after Edsa, well, that’s a miracle we had to work hard on as well. Who knows, maybe if there weren’t as many coup attempts during her term, maybe. If all those people who sought to bring her down, could have worked with her instead, who knows what could have happened?
Cory lasted more than six months. She did finish her term She was, after all, the people’s president. And as a testament of the woman’s character, despite having a chance to run again—and she would have won by a landslide—she walked away from it all, well actually, drove away, from Malacañang, in a simple privately owned Toyota sedan.
They say that power corrupts, but Cory Aquino’s personal probity was beyond reproach. Even her critics swore by it. She never personally profited from her stay in office. And when her tenure as president was up, she never thought of staying a day more, despite having the chance to. Which is a lot more than you can say from a president who would do anything and everything to stay in power.
Good luck and godspeed to you, President Cory. We are all praying for you and believing that you will get well.
