Of Tita Cory

The image of her brown casket saluted and cheered by thousands of simple people is enough to bring me to tears. What is it about this woman which has captured the hearts and minds of an entire country and gained her the respect of the whole world?

She has been many things to us, icon of democracy, first woman president, mother of the new Filipino nation, to name just a few. She has been all that and more. She was and is an embodiment of those rarest of qualities in a politician; rock-solid integrity, brutal honesty tempered with a deep and true concern for country and people and most of all, faith and childlike trust in God. It does not matter that during her incumbency numerous coup attempts had been staged or that various detractors had indicated she could have done a lot more of political reforms. What has made her dear to our hearts is her humility and disregard for power. Such is the contradiction that this simple, unassuming widow became one of the most powerful and influential people of our generation.

What has Cory been to me? I was still in grade school back in the 80's during Ninoy's Assassination and Cory's rise to power. Raised as we were in a politically oriented family of the opposition, I can clearly recall doing my share in preparing leaflets and making coffee for the numerous supporters who flocked to our family home in Lanao during the 1986 Snap Elections. My older cousins would join the political rallies and even provide support for the groups going on house to house campaign in the mountain barangays, never mind the threat to life that we had to endure during the Marcos years. Such was the dedication of my family that Cory's cousin King Sumulong would rather sleep at our home rather than at the parish house where the campaign leaders usually stayed during those dangerous times. In my young mind, idealism had been sparked by the courage of this housewife who dared to take on a brutal regime whose followers would not hesitate to kill even in broad daylight.

I will forever be thankful for Cory's legacy. My formative years as a student journalist were during the heady days post-Edsa. Without her sacrifice, my generation might have known only brutal repression and fear instead of the freedom we needed to fully explore and develop our potential and youthful idealism. I had marched my own share of rallies in the years that followed and I never felt the need to hide my opinion for fear of retaliation. Even now that I have been touched by cynicism at the state of our nation, the death of Cory and the massive outpouring of support has given me hope, hope that the Filipino still has what it takes to rise out of the inglorious heap we have fallen, hope that the Filipino is still worth dying for. And Tita Cory's legacy will live on...