CORY AQUINO - EXEMPLAR OF COURAGE

One Happy Cory

The late President Corazon C. Aquino was an exemplar of what the leader of a democratic country should be.

Her entire life was an example of moral courage. After the assassination of her husband, Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., she was called upon to lead the fight against the Marcos dictatorship and she did not flinch from the challenge. With the help of the people (People Power had its beginnings in the Philippines), the Church, the rebel soldiers and their leaders, she won the fight and ousted Ferdinand E. Marcos. She restored democracy and after serving for six years in Malacañang, she relinquished power. But even in her retirement she continued to be a strong voice against dishonesty, cheating and corruption in government.

She was a shining example of an honest and incorruptible leader. She was so honest and so scrupulous with government money and property that she was known to tell her grandchildren who would visit her in Malacañang to ask first if some candies were theirs or the government’s. If it was “government” candy, they were not to eat it.

She possessed not only moral courage but physical courage. She was ready to risk her life to defend democracy, and defend it she did in the seven times that rebel soldiers, backed by politicians and businessmen, mounted coups against her. Former presidential legal counsel Rene Saguisag recalled that during the Dec. 1, 1989 coup attempt, the most serious of the coup threats, she was very calm and was resolved to stay in Malacañang at all costs.

She had an abiding respect for the institutions and processes of democracy and the rule of law. Soon after she was sworn in as president, she formed the Constitutional Commission to draft a new Constitution and thereafter called for congressional elections. If she had the ambition to rule as a “strong woman,” she could have done so because she was brought to power by a revolution. But she had deep faith in the workings of democracy and so she immediately took steps to bring the country back to democratic rule.

She had no lust for power. She knew that her stay in Malacañang was temporary, and she never thought of extending her term. An indication of her attitude toward the transitory nature of power was the fact that she held office not in the Palace itself but in a room that used to be called the Guest House. Some of her advisers told her that she could run again because she was not elected president under the new Constitution. But she declined to run for another term and instead turned over the reins of power to her successor, retired Gen. Fidel V. Ramos. Contrast this with continuing machinations of the incumbent to extend her grip on power at any cost, and by any means.

Seven coup attempts and a series of natural disasters, including the 1990 Luzon earthquake, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 and typhoon “Uring” that left 6,000 people dead in Ormoc City hobbled her administration’s attempt to improve the economic and social condition of the country. But her greatest achievement was to restore democracy in the country and bring it to some level of normality.

Corazon Aquino has died but her spirit still lives in the democracy that she brought back to life in the Philippines. But now that that democracy and the nation’s freedom are again in peril, the best tribute that a grateful people can give her is to remain continually vigilant and fight any attempt to impose a new tyrannical rule. [Philippine Daily Inquirer, Editorial 8/4/2009]