Aug. 5 burial day declared special holiday

Go and see Cory for the last time on Wednesday.

Malacañang has declared the funeral of Corazon Aquino on Wednesday a special nonworking holiday to allow more Filipinos to pay their last respects to the country’s democracy icon, who died on Saturday.

“It is but proper for a grieving people to be given the opportunity to honor and show their respect, appreciation and gratitude to the beloved former President in their own respective ways,” President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said in Proclamation No. 1851.

Ms Arroyo earlier signed Proclamation No. 1850 declaring a period of national mourning from Aug. 1 to Aug. 10, with all Philippine flags flying at half-staff.

She herself decided to cut short her visit to the United States so she could arrive in time for the funeral, according to acting Executive Secretary Gabriel Claudio.

The President is scheduled to arrive “before the break of dawn” on Wednesday.

Ms Arroyo will arrive in Manila just a few hours before Aquino is laid to rest beside her husband, former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., at the Manila Memorial Park in Sucat, Parañaque City.

The President has opted to leave New York on Monday on a flight that would take her back to Malacañang by 3 a.m. on Aug. 5, barely in time for the burial set at 10 a.m.

Except for a Mass to be held in Malacañang upon her arrival, it remained unclear whether Ms Arroyo would attend the burial.

“If the funeral is at 10, the President and her party have time to visit the remains of the former President,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said at a briefing at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Chartered flight

Ermita said Ms Arroyo, who scrapped her scheduled meetings in Chicago, San Francisco and Guam, would take a chartered flight out of New York.

After refueling in San Francisco, she would fly nonstop to Manila.

Whether Ms Arroyo would actually attend the funeral or just show up at Manila Cathedral where Aquino’s remains will lie in state starting on Monday, Claudio said: “We don’t know that yet.”

If she would show up at the cathedral, Ms Arroyo would be paying her last respects to a fellow leader who had openly criticized not a few of her policies.

Against Charter change

Already in her sick bed, Aquino issued a strongly worded statement condemning administration lawmakers’ efforts to amend the 1987 Constitution—crafted a year after she took office following a people power revolt—through House Resolution No. 1109.

The statement was read by Aquino’s grandson at a rally against Charter change on Ayala and Paseo de Roxas avenues in Makati City on June 10.

HR 1109 seeks to convene a constituent assembly with the House of Representatives and the Senate acting as one body to amend the Constitution.

Critics claimed that amending the Constitution would pave the way for a shift to a parliamentary form of government and allow Ms Arroyo to hold on to power by running for her district in Pampanga and become prime minister.

Awkwardness, feeling of grief

Asked if there would be any discomfort on the part of Ms Arroyo should she attend the funeral, Claudio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer: “Any feeling of awkwardness, assuming there is, can be overcome by the sincere feeling of grief that the President shares with the rest of the nation.”

He said the passing away of Aquino should be observed “in the spirit of unity and brotherhood among Filipinos.”

“If it would not be presumptuous on my part, we hope that this event would serve as an occasion for Filipinos to be one,” he said.

Claudio said the Palace also would not mind if the Aquino family turned down its offer of a state funeral. He said Malacañang made the option available, but it was still up to the family to decide.

Private wake, funeral

The Aquino family has decided to hold a private wake and funeral.

The Palace deferred to the family’s wish to keep the interment as simple as possible and to forgo the granting of state honors in Malacañang that would have meant a lying in state at the Palace.

Speaking with the government-run Radyo ng Bayan, Claudio said Aquino had “a special place in the history of democracy and the struggle for freedom, not only in the Philippines but throughout the world.”

Debt of gratitude

“All of us who now enjoy the blessings of freedom in a democratic environment and system owe a debt of gratitude to President Cory beyond words,” he said.

While awaiting Ms Arroyo’s arrival, the Palace lined up activities on Monday to honor the late president.

Claudio will deliver a message for Aquino at the flag ceremony in front of the Mabini Hall in Malacañang at 8 a.m. The event will be followed by a Mass and a novena for the eternal repose of the former president.

Claudio encouraged other government agencies to hold similar activities to honor the value and contributions of Aquino to Philippine democracy.

Pope, other world leaders honor Cory

Pope Benedict XVI hailed the late former President Corazon Aquino for her “courageous commitment to the freedom of the Filipino people” as he conveyed his condolences to her family.

In a telegram sent to Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the Pope was “deeply saddened” to learn of Aquino’s death.

Her family said in a statement that she died “peacefully” early Saturday from cardio-respiratory arrest, after her battle with cancer.

Bertone said that the Pope remembered Aquino as a woman of “deep and unwavering faith” and that the Holy Father prayed that the same faith and hope would be abundantly fulfilled.

“Recalling President Aquino’s courageous commitment to the freedom of the Filipino people, her firm rejection of violence and intolerance, and her contribution to the rebuilding of a just and cohesive political order in her beloved homeland, (his) Holiness commends her noble soul to the eternal mercies of God our Heavenly Father,” the telegram said.

Aquino was propelled into the political spotlight in 1986, leading millions of Filipinos in protests against the corrupt regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Outpouring of graces

The Pope also extended his blessings to the Filipino people.

“Invoking upon all the Filipino people an outpouring of Divine Graces, the Holy Father cordially imparts his apostolic blessing to all taking part in the Mass of Christian Burial, as a pledge of consolation, strength and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bertone said.

The Vatican secretary of state told Rosales that the Pope was asking the Manila archbishop to convey his condolences not only to the Aquino family but also to Philippine officials.

“The Holy Father was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Mrs. Corazon Aquino and he asks you to convey to her family and the government authorities his heartfelt condolences and the assurance of his prayers for her eternal rest,” the telegram read.

The text of Bertone’s telegram to the Manila archbishop was posted on the website of the Holy See’s press office’s daily bulletin.

UN secretary general

Other world leaders sent their messages honoring Aquino.

“[I] pay tribute to the former President’s exceptional courage and pivotal role in the restoration and consolidation of democracy in the Philippines,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban said “Aquino will be remembered as a beacon of democracy not only in the Philippines but also around the world.”

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said “Aquino’s contributions to the development of the country and tireless devotion to peace, stability and democracy” for the Filipino people “are well recognized throughout the world and will always be remembered and cherished by all of us with admiration and respect.”

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said he learned “with deep sorrow” the passing of Aquino whom he described as “a world-renowned advocate of democracy, peace and women’s empowerment.”

“Her Excellency Aquino will be remembered for her great contributions during her presidency and beyond toward democracy in the Republic of the Philippines and throughout the region,” he said.

In his own message, Rosales called on Filipinos to pause in prayer and thank God for Aquino.

“Cory Aquino was said to have wrestled with herself and conscience before deciding to offer herself as an alternative to a harsh dictatorship,” he said.

“And when finally, crowned with the people’s trust, she even suffered more when in the process of guiding the country, countless attempts were put to destabilize the people’s fledgling newly regained democracy,” he added.

Rosales said it was up to Filipinos to live up to what Aquino and her martyred husband, former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., did for the nation.

“Ninoy’s sacrifice for a dream for the Filipino made Corazon C. Aquino. Cory Aquino’s simplicity and fidelity to a dream to guide the people complete the story of the Filipino people,” he said in his message.

Kris explains rejection of Palace offer

The family of former President Corazon Aquino had decided against a state funeral for her because of their differences with the Arroyo administration, her youngest daughter said Sunday.

Television host Kris Aquino said Malacañang had offered to give her mother a state funeral befitting the former President, but her siblings turned it down.

In an interview on national television Sunday, Kris said the differences stemmed from an administration decision to recall two soldiers serving as her mother’s security detail after the former President called on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down in 2005.

“From what I understand, the unit taking care of former Presidents was being dissolved. We were requested to write a letter justifying why my mom should keep her bodyguards, Mel and Cris,” she explained on “The Buzz,” the show biz-oriented program that Kris co-hosts with Boy Abunda on Sundays.

“But it’s my mom’s right to have security. We just wanted the respect due my mom, a former President. Don’t take away my mom’s security blanket. [My brother] Noy was the one who took care of [this],” she said in English and Filipino.

Aquino died on Saturday after a long battle against colon cancer. She was 76. Her body lies in state at the La Salle Green Hills gymnasium in Mandaluyong City.

Why now?

So when the emissary from the Arroyo administration approached the family and asked if they wanted a state funeral, Kris became emotional.

“So I said, ‘Now you want to honor my mom? When you had taken away what was due her as a former President,’” she said in Filipino.

“This matter was already carefully explained to me. I’m just sharing this so that Noy would never have to be asked about this. Mel and Cris are like family to us. [They cried] at my mom’s bedside with us. They accompanied my mom in all her medical checkups and operation. My mom told Ate (Ballsy Aquino-Cruz) to make sure that they are taken care of,” she added.

“Malacañang doesn’t have to give honor to my mom because the honor comes from the country,” Kris said of her family’s decision to turn down the government’s offer.

During the two-hour program, Kris also expressed her gratitude to the people who helped her family through the ordeal, including former President Joseph Estrada, who had visited Aquino on July 29 at Makati Medical Center but had kept quiet about it.

“Quietly, [Estrada] had been so good to mom … When mom needed a friend, he was a friend to her,” she said.

Aquino was at the forefront of Estrada’s ouster in 2001. She was among those who led the people during the four-day revolt that peacefully overthrew Estrada on Jan. 20 that year.

“Despite this, he reached out to her. My respect for him grew because of this,” Kris said.

She also expressed gratitude to the family of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, who was unseated by an Aquino-led nonviolent Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986, for offering prayers for her mother.

“I never thought the time would come [that I would say this], but thank you to the Marcoses for really praying for mom,” she said.

Imelda’s call

Former first lady Imelda Marcos Sunday expressed sadness at the passing of Aquino, who led the 1986 uprising that overthrew her husband Ferdinand.

“Let us now unite in prayers for Cory, the Filipino people and for our country,” she told reporters in a church in Tondo, Manila.

Marcos also publicly sought prayers for Aquino when she was ill. Weeks earlier, however, she called Aquino a “usurper” and a “dictator.”

Cory, a simple woman

Aquino’s only son, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, told reporters that there would not be a state funeral because his mother was “a simple woman who shunned pomp and pageantry.”

“She wouldn’t have liked it,” the senator said Sunday in an interview at La Salle Green Hills. “My mother has certain traits and attitudes about how things should be done … Knowing her, she wouldn’t have liked a funeral with all its formalities and protocol.”

He noted that his mother hardly wore any jewelry.

“Her wedding ring and a wristwatch. She changed her eyeglasses, but the ring, the watch remained the same,” Noynoy said.

No luxuries

The former President also stayed in the same house on Times Street in Quezon City.

“She was asked to move to their ancestral house in Forbes Park, but she refused,” he said.

Noynoy said his mother used the same car for years and only recently replaced it with a Toyota SUV, a gift from Kris.

“She didn’t care for any luxury,” he said in Filipino.

Still wrapped in plastic

Some years ago, Aquino was gifted with a massage chair. Years later, she was given a new massage chair to replace the old one. “The new one is still there wrapped [in plastic],” her son said.

Aquino lived on Times until last year when she moved to the Green Meadows house of her eldest daughter Maria Elena “Ballsy” Cruz while undergoing treatment for colorectal cancer.

On Sunday, Nonoy said he went home to the Times house to rest. “I felt compelled to check her room. It was locked,” he said.

Rich, poor come for Cory Aquino

In scenes reminiscent of the massive mourning for her murdered husband, thousands of people Sunday came to grieve for Cory Aquino. Some came on foot, others in diplomatic cars. Some were from the affluent class, but many were poor. Most quietly filed past her flag-draped coffin, others openly wept.

As they came for Cory 23 years ago to answer the call for people power against a dictator, so they came again Sunday to be by her side. But this time, they came to bid her farewell.

One of the mourners, Baby Dantes, 59, who described herself as a small businesswoman from Quezon City, burst into hysterics.

“Why did it have to be Cory?” she shouted, weeping. “There are so many other presidents who are liars and thieves, but why did it have to be you?”

The scene occurred at the La Salle Green Hills gymnasium where the woman who led the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that restored democracy in the Philippines lay in state, looking serene in a glittering yellow dress, a purple rosary with hints of gold entwined around her hands.

Many in the long line of mourners that stretched all the way to EDSA (Epifanio delos Santos Avenue) braved heat and intermittent rain and queued for hours—some as early as 5 a.m.—just to have a few seconds’ glimpse of the woman they simply call “Cory” before her funeral on Wednesday.

Most of the mourners wore yellow, while others came in black.

One man in crutches did not mind struggling up the ascending pathway leading up to the gym, and huffed with every step.

Another mourner, a woman, said she was willing to wait until she got her turn to see Aquino—despite her shaking with high fever.

The mourners came from all walks of life—politicians, foreign diplomats, housewives with children in tow, soldiers, fathers and sons, teachers, government employees, students in school uniform, teenagers in groups and celebrities.

Reflecting the prayerful life of the dead woman, voices of mourners in the gym droned on as they continuously prayed the rosary and recited a prayer for intercession for Aquino’s soul to rest in peace. The prayers were laced with religious songs.

Filipino is worth living for

Dantes, the woman who broke into hysterics, was accompanied by her 11-year-old grandson who, by a stroke of irony, bore the surname “Marcos,” although the family had no relation to the late dictator.

“If I could only erase that horrible surname, I would. We will apply to have his surname changed,” Dantes said.

At a noon Mass, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president Archbishop Angel Lagdameo said Aquino had “lived the meaning of ‘the Filipino is worth dying for,’” a statement made famous by her martyred husband, the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.

Lagdameo said Cory Aquino accomplished this when she “responded to the call to lead her people as president for six years.”

“She said the Filipino is worth living for,” the archbishop said to applause.

Mama Mary’s way

In his homily, Fr. Teofilo Rustia, a chaplain of the Presidential Security Group during Aquino’s term, recalled seeing a strange woman place a veil on Aquino’s head in the middle of a Mass.

Rustia said it was eerie because Aquino was under heavy guard yet no one among the presidential guards had noticed the woman at all. He said he thought it was just his imagination, until choir members told him they saw the woman, too.

The priest said: “This was during the time when there were coups. Could it be that it was Mama Mary’s way to tell her that she will protect her?”

Although the Aquino family has shunned a state funeral offered by Malacañang, no less than acting Executive Secretary Gabriel Claudio was at the wake on Saturday night.

Others who came that night included former President Fidel Ramos and Vice President Noli de Castro.

On Sunday, the visitors included former Senate President Franklin Drilon, Pampanga Gov. Eddie “Among Ed” Panlilio and Sen. Rodolfo Biazon. There were also foreign visitors, like Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, wife of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and Ambassador Alistair Macdonald, head of the European Commission delegation to the Philippines,

Panlilio said he shared Aquino’s view that the country needed healing and an honest, incorruptible leader.

Malaysian friend

Wearing a yellow veil and pin with Aquino’s image, Wan Azizah said she had always felt an affinity to Aquino, with whom she shared the experience of being the wife of a persecuted leader.

She read to reporters a statement written by Anwar in which he said: “Oppressed masses in Asia, nay the world, touched their forelocks in gratitude to her (Aquino) for the inspiring example of her courage in the face of adversity.”

Former Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman and former Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Deles were on hand to help usher the guests into the gymnasium.

NBN-ZTE whistle-blower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada distributed bright yellow ribbons to the media and mourners for them to pin on their shirts.

Family spirits lifted

Earlier, National Capital Region Police Office chief Director Roberto Rosales warned those planning to attend the wake to be prepared for long lines and traffic jams. He advised them to exercise patience and vigilance in the queue.

He also urged the public not to bring children to the wake. Moreover, those with cars should think twice about using their vehicles, Rosales said.

The sheer number of people who turned up at the wake has lifted the spirits of the Aquino family, despite their grief.

“The family is very, very happy,” Aquino spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said at a media briefing.

Aquino’s remains are to be transferred on Monday to the Manila Cathedral for the continuation of the wake. At the cathedral, it would almost be impossible to accommodate the thousands who would want to pay their last respects to her, organizers said.

Since the cathedral is a much smaller place than the La Salle Green Hills gym, Siytangco said one “welcome” alternative was for people to line up the streets and wait for the funeral cortege to pass.

“People who may not be able to go to the Cathedral can line the streets, wear yellow and throw yellow flowers and confetti to her as she passes by,” she said.

“That’s welcome because I know that the three-day viewing is very short for many people who have turned out from all over the country … As you can see the lines are so long here and they brought their families here just to take a glimpse of her,” she added.

Siytangco said that the wake and the funeral would go on even if it rained.

Next-generation activist

Laborer Jose Olazo, 53, brought his year-old grandson to the wake with a yellow band tied around the child’s head. Olazo, an activist, cried at Aquino’s casket.

“He’s the next-generation protester,” he said, pointing to his grandson James.

An Election Against All Odds

Aquino proved to be an inspiring campaigner, evoking tears and passion wherever she spoke. Hundreds of thousands turned out for many of her rallies; Marcos responded by bussing in thousands of his own for counter-rallies. The country seemed to be polarized. Almost immediately after the Feb. 7, 1986 polls closed, Aquino stunned Marcos by claiming victory; then the official tabulation trickled to a stop and Marcos was declared the winner by the government. Aquino declared she had been cheated.

In Her Husband's Name, Challenging the Tyrant

Without Benigno Aquino, contending ambitions prevented the opposition from coalescing around a single candidate, even as the country appeared to be galvanized against the regime. Marcos sensed their disarray and, confident in the support of his friend President Ronald Reagan, declared a snap election to prove he still had a popular mandate. Only then did the soft-spoken, pious Catholic widow to realize, reluctantly, that only she could unite the opposition, that only she could make her husband's dream come true.

The Martyr's Wife

With Benigno Aquino's political star rising, Marcos assumed dictatorial powers in 1972 and imprisoned his archrival. Under international pressure, Aquino was eventually allowed to leave the country with his wife and children for exile in Boston. In 1983, however, he chose to return to the Philippines to try to offer himself as a political alternative to an ailing Marcos. The regime warned it could not guarantee his safety; but Aquino flew back anyway and was assassinated allegedly by a lone gunman while being escorted off his plane by Philippine soldiers. Corazon Aquino flew home for his funeral.

A Life of Privilege

She was born Corazon Cojuangco, an heiress to one of the great fortunes in the Philippines. In 1954, she married Benigno Aquino, one of the most ambitious and promising politicians in the country. Before they met, however, Benigno had dated a young beauty queen named Imelda Romualdez. Years later, his political career would turn him into the political nemesis of the man Imelda married, Ferdinand Marcos, who was elected president in 1965.

Corazon Aquino's Life in Photos

Champion of Democracy
TIME chose Corazon Aquino as its Person of the Year for 1986, recognizing her central role in one of the most compelling dramas in recent history — the widowed housewife who avenges her husband's death by overthrowing the regime widely blamed for his murder. In February 1986, Aquino rose to the presidency of the Philippines after a popular uprising that forced Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos from power. She was the first woman to be designated TIME's Person of the Year since Queen Elizabeth II for 1952.

Filipinos pay respects to Aquino

millions of people in the Philippines have been queuing to pay their respects in front of the body of former leader Corazon Aquino, who died on Saturday.

Mrs Aquino's body is lying in state at a Catholic school in Manila, where it will remain until Monday morning.

The Philippines has declared 10 days of mourning for the former president.

Mrs Aquino, Asia's first female president, led the 1986 "people power" uprising that deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Many of people the people who gathered at the De La Salle school where her body is lying in state were dressed in yellow, the colour associated with the "people power" movement.

Crowds have also been visiting her home and the shrine where her 1986 revolution culminated, leaving yellow flowers and lighting candles.

Flags are at half-mast and hundreds of people have tied symbolic yellow ribbons to cars and trees.
Mrs Aquino had been suffering from colon cancer for more than a year when she died aged 76.

She was catapulted into politics following the murder of her husband, the prominent Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, who had been preparing to run for president.
After winning the presidential elections in 1986, she went on to run a country deeply divided after years of martial law and communist insurgency.

She battled several coup attempts against her rule, protected the country's fledgling democracy and freed political prisoners.

In recent years, she campaigned against former President Estrada, but then reconciled with him to join protests against incumbent President Gloria Arroyo over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption.

"She left a big imprint on our history," said Florin Nagit, one of the mourners at the De La Salle school.

"I think she made Filipinos think of how it is to live as a Filipino, to be courageous and most of all to be honest and sincere."

News of Mrs Aquino's death drew numerous international tributes.

Among those to visit the school was Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the wife of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Mrs Aquino will be buried beside her husband at the Manila Memorial Park in a private ceremony on Wednesday.

Thousands line streets for Cory

Just like Ninoy's funeral in August 1983

MANILA - An estimated crowd of 25,000 lined the whole length of Ayala Avenue in Makati City and thousands more viewed the funeral convoy of former President Corazon Aquino as she was brought to Manila Cathedral from La Salle Green Hills on Monday.

In scenes reminiscent of the 1986 People Power revolution that catapulted Aquino to the presidency, Makati employees threw confetti out of their office windows while the electronic ticker outside the Insular Life Building on Paseo de Roxas-Ayala Avenue flashed pictures of Aquino and the words "Paalam, Cory."

Footage taken by ABS-CBN's Sky Patrol showed the crowds flashing the "L

US leaders saddened over ex-President Cory Aquino’s death

Sa pagpanaw ni former president Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco-Aquino, ay nakiisa rin sa pagluluksa ang mga prominenteng pulitiko ng ibang bansa, particular na sa America. Nang mabalitaan ng mga ito ang pagpanaw ni former president Cory ay nagbigay ng mensahe sina US Senator Hillary Clinton at US President Barrack Obama bilang pagbibigay-pugay sa unang pangulong babae ng Pilipinas.

“I’m so sorry,” simula ni Sen. Hillary Clinton. “I wrote her a note a few weeks ago when I heard that she was so sick. I admired her greatly. She was a woman of courage who loved her country. She and her family sacrificed so much to try to give the people of the Philippines a better future. And I think that she’s an inspiration not only to the Philippines but to people everywhere who believe in the right values and positive future.”

Mula naman sa White House ay naglabas ng official statement ni President Obama sa pamamagitan ni US Press Secretary Robert Gibbs bilang pagkilala sa malaking kontribusyon ni ex-president Cory upang makamit muli ang demokrasya ng Pilipinas sa panahon ng Martial Law na ipinataw ni dating pangulong Ferdinand Marcos.

“The (US) president was deeply saddened by the death of former president of the Philippines Corazon C. Aquino,” simula ng official statement mula sa opisina ni Pres. Obama. “Mrs. Aquino played a crucial role in the Philippine’s history, moving the democratic rule through her non-violent “People Power” movement over twenty years ago. Her courage, determination, and moral leadership are an inspiration to us all and exemplify the best in the Filipino nation on behalf of the American people. The president extends his deepest condolences to the Aquino family and the nation of the Philippines.”

Samantala, sa ating bansa, nagbigay naman ng full military honors ang Armed Forces of the Philippines sa pamamagitan ng volleys of cannon fire o ang pagpapaputok ng mga kanyon kada 30 minuto noong Agosto 1, ang araw nang pumanaw si Mrs. Aquino. Ang nasabing military honors ay pagbibigay-pugay sa dating commander-in-chief ng bansa.

Sa De La Salle Greenhills ginanap ang burol ni Mrs. Aquino dahil sa nasabing lugar ginanap ang quick count noong 1986 nang ganapin ang snap election na nagbigay daan upang mailuklok siya bilang ika-11 pangulo ng Pilipinas.

Kris Aquino says former president Joseph Estrada earned her respect

Sa malungkot na pagpanaw ni dating pangulong Corazon Aquino ay may magagandang kaganapan ding itong naidulot, halimbawa lamang, ipinakita ni dating pangulong Joseph Estrada na tunay siyang kaibigan sa pamilya Aquino kahit na nagkaroon sila ng hidwaan dulot ng mga isyung pampulitika dati. “I respect this man so much now,” sabi ni Kris sa The Buzz kahapon. “Nakiusap si (dating) presidente Erap kung pwede siyang dumalaw. People close to our families said okay lang sa kanila pero kung pwede tahimik na lang and he understood. Dumaan siya sa basement, umikot siya and when media asked him kung nakausap niya ang mom ko sinabi niya, ‘Nilabas lang ako ni Noy (Noynoy Aquino) at ni Kris. That’s not true. We allowed him inside but I think he wanted to give our family that privacy.” Hinangaan ni Kris si Erap dahil nirespeto niya ang kahilingan ng pamilya at hindi ginamit ang pakikipagkita nito kay Gng. Aquino para sa publisidad. Makabuluhan ang kaganapang ito dahil isa si Gng. Aquino sa mga nanguna sa pag-aalsa dati upang mapatalsik mula sa pagiging presidente si Erap.

Kinuwento pa nga ni Kris ang pag-uusap nila ni Erap at ibinahagi ng huli ang unang pag-uusap nila ni dating pangulong Cory. “He told me, ‘Alam mo, Kris, ‘yung first conversation namin ng mom mo, nung bago akong senador at presidente siya. Tinanong niya ako, ‘Do you think, okay lang na payagan kong mag-artista si Kris?’ And then sinabi daw niya sa mom, ‘Maganda naman po, mukha naman pong may talent and mukhang gusto siya ng tao so payagan n’yo na po,’” kuwento ni Kris. Sinabi umano niya kay Erap na naging mabuti ito sa kanyang ina at hindi siya nag-ingay. “Almost linggo-linggo, may pagkain siyang pinaadalala quietly. Lumaki ang respeto ko dahil nirespeto niya kami bilang pamilya.”

Para kay Kris, mas importante sa kanya na ipinaramdam ni Erap ang magandang intensyon niya sa kalagayan ng pamilya lalo pa nang kinailangan nila ng privacy. “I want to say thank you for that because ayaw niyang malagay sa alanganin ang aming pamilya, na mabigyan ng political color. He made me appreciate him so much more. When mom needed a friend he was a friend kaya maraming salamat sa kanya (at) sa buong pamilya nila,” tapos ni Kris.

Kris Aquino on mom Cory Aquino: ‘She was there for everything’

Sa special episode ng The Buzz kahapon na nagsilbing tribute kay dating pangulong Cory Aquino, ibinahagi ni Kris Aquino ang magagandang alaala ng kanyang ina. Ikinuwento niya kung paano ipinaramdam ng yumaong dating pangulo kung gaano ka-espesyal ang kanyang limang anak. “She was there for everything. She was there for us,” madamdaming kuwento ni Kris. “She would listen and ‘pag nagsusumbong ako, she would always point out the other side.”

Gaya na lamang kay Kris, sa lahat ng premiere night ng actress-host ay dumadalo ang nanay niya. “Ang pamahiin niya kapag nag-attend daw siya ng premiere night, (magiging) blockbuster ‘yung movie ko. She was that type of mom,” sabi ni Kris.

Ibinahagi rin ni Kris ang masayang kuwentuhan nila ng ina nang mabanggit nito ang posibilidad ng pagkakaroon nila ng sitcom ni Willie Revillame. “Sabi niya, ‘E baka ma-link kayo sa isa’t isa,’ sabi ko, ‘Mom naman.’ She had a sense of humor and I want to get that across,” pahayag ni Kris. “Sabi ko, ‘Di ba, Mom, kung kami ni Willie ang magsama sa show (magiging) super hit?’ And she’d say, ‘Konting humility, please, ‘” natatawang kuwento ng bunso ng dating pangulo.

Naging madamdamin din si Kris nang ikuwento niyang very thankful ang kanilang pamilya dahil binigyan sila ng pagkakataon ng Diyos upang ihanda sila sa pagpanaw ng kanyang ina, kabaliktaran umano nang kunin sa kanila ang kanilang ama na si former senator Ninoy Aquino. “In God’s wisdom, He gave us one year and six months to be prepared for mom to go,” sambit ni Kris. “It wasn’t na parang biglang na-shock na lang kami. Kay Dad I was never able to tell him how much I loved him except in an interview. Pero sa Mom, lahat kami nabigyan ng chance. And now looking back nobody wishes cancer on anybody, nobody wishes that pain, but ang bait ni God sa pamilya namin kasi he gave us the chance to make Mom feel we love her and he gave Mom the chance to say thank you. Every time, she never forgot to say thank you.” At sa kabila ng pagtulo ng kanyang mga luha ay sinabi ni Kris na nagpapasalamat siya at nabigyan siya ng pagkakataon na ma-spoil ang kanyang ina.

Lalong naiyak si Kris nang sabihin niyang ngayon ay wala na ang ina upang dumalo sa tuwing pagkakaroon siya ng premiere night o magbigay ng mensahe sa kanya tuwing may proyekto siya. “Ngayon ko iniisip talaga what it’s gonna be like ‘pag may bagong show (tapos) walang magte-text to say congrats good luck,” emosyonal na pagsambit ni Kris.

Boy Abunda promises Tita Cory that he’ll look after Kris Aquino and her kids

Kilalang isa sa mga pinakamalapit na kaibigan ni Kris Aquino si Boy Abunda at isa ang King of Talk sa mga piling hindi miyembro ng pamilya Aquino na nakabisita nang nasa ospital ang ina ni Kris na si Cory Aquino. At bago pumanaw ang dating pangulo ay nagbitiw umano ng pangako si Boy na hindi niya iiwan si Kris at ang mga anak nito. “You’re the only other non-family member who went,” kwento ni Kris hinggil sa pagdalaw ni Boy sa ospital. “I don’t know what you told mom but I’m assuming na sinabi mo na hindi mo ako iiwan kasi hindi mo talaga ako iniwan. You were there, you were praying by her bedside.”

Sa special tribute ng The Buzz kahapon kay dating pangulong Cory ay kinumpirma ni Boy na ito nga ang ipinangako niya sa ina ni Kris. “Noong Sabado pong ‘yon ako po’y pumunta sa ospital. Ako’y lumapit po kay Tita Cory at quietly I was talking to her at ‘yon sinabi ko that, ‘Tita to the best I can, hindi ko pababayan si Kris at kanyang mga anak.’ I kept on saying that, paulit-ulit.”

Isa ring magandang pangyayari sa pagpanaw ni Gng. Cory ay ang pagpapasalamat ni Kris sa pamilya Marcos. Matatandaan kasing si dating pangulong Cory ang nagpataob sa rehimeng Marcos sa pamamagitan ng isang snap election na humantong sa People Power sa EDSA. Ang pamilya Marcos din ang matinding kalaban sa pulitika ng ama ni Kris na si dating senador Ninoy Aquino. “I’d like to say I never thought the time would come but I say thank you to the Marcoses for really praying for my mom. I felt the sincerity at gusto kong magpasalamat,” sambit ni Kris.

Naging madamdamin din si Kris nang sabihin niya na ipinangangako niya na kahit pumanaw na ang ina ay patuloy siyang magkukuwento rito at tutuparin ang tungkulin bilang taga-aliw ng pamilya. “I said, ‘Mom you know I promise you every night before I sleep, kukuwentuhan kita ng lahat ng nangyari sa akin, ng lahat ng nangyari sa family. And even in heaven I promise to continue making you aliw,” sabi pa ni Kris.

The Essential Cory Aquino: The Unpaved Road to the Presidency

All too soon, Cory was under pressure to continue Ninoy’s mission. In Boston, Guy Pauker of the Rand Corporation, a close friend of her husband’s, told her: “Cory, you will have to rethink your political role.” Another family friend, Benjamin Brown of Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs, was more emphatic. “Cory, I think you should be thinking about the presidency,” he said. What do I know about being president? she asked. Brown replied: “Nobody does. There is no school for presidents.” A Filipino friend, Juan Collas, urged the same thing. Suppose you say no and Marcos again wins, will your conscience not bother you, knowing that maybe you could have made a difference and you did not even try? he wrote in a letter to her. The sentiment echoed what Ninoy said when asked why he decided to go home: “I will never be able to forgive myself knowing that I could have done something and I did not do anything.”

The stage was set for a contest between Ninoy’s widow and his political nemesis. The next presidential polls were not due until 1987, but pressed by the Unites States and the country’s international creditors to prove his mandate, Marcos called a snap presidential election for 1986. After a day of fasting and prayer, Cory declared her candidacy over the objections of many in her family. Dressed in her trademark yellow, she drew huge crowds wherever she went. (Ninoy’s welcomers had decorated trees and lampposts with yellow ribbons in 1983, in reference to the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.) Marcos derided Cory as “just a woman” whose place was in the bedroom. She called him a coward for threatening to take her out with a single bullet and promised him no more than a single ballot in return. Cory cast the election as a morality play in which Filipinos could finally bring Marcos to account for his evil deeds, not least the assassination of her husband.

The election was held on February 7, 1986. As expected, Marcos’s henchmen did everything to ensure victory, from bribery to coercion, to stealing ballot boxes, to manipulating the counting. But a third force had entered the equation. In the past, the middle class, the business community, and the Catholic Church had shied from politics, but Ninoy’s murder and his widow’s candidacy had galvanized them. One of the most compelling images of the 1986 election was that of nuns, students, and professionals forming human chains to guard the ballot. Another was the walkout of computer programmers, many of them women, from the control center of the national canvassing office. The numbers they were inputting into their machines, which showed that Cory was leading, were not being reflected in the tabulation boards, which were giving Marcos the edge.

But the Marcos-controlled legislature proclaimed their patron winner, with 10,807,197 votes to Cory’s 9,291,716 votes. Cory rejected the result and called for a nonviolent protest movement. Then, reformist elements of the armed forces made their move. They had been plotting a coup against Marcos, but the snap presidential election temporarily derailed their plans. The project was resumed after Marcos blatantly stole the 1986 polls, but the government discovered the plot. Threatened with arrest, defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and armed forces vice chief of staff Fidel Ramos holed up in Camp Crame, along Manila’s main thoroughfare, Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA). Jaime Cardinal Sin appealed for civilian support over Radio Veritas. In a repear of Ninoy’s funeral and Cory’s campaign rallies, Filipinos came in the thousands to form a human shield against Marcos’s minions.

It was the birth of People Power, a nonviolent way for ordinary citizens to reclaim their freedom and bring about a peaceful transfer of power. Television viewers across the world marveled as hundreds of thousands of praying Filipinos, armed only with rosaries and flowers, repulsed tanks and armored vehicles. Cory took her oath of office as the country’s eleventh president at 11:00 a.m. on February 25, 1986, at Club Filipino. One hour later, Marcos held his own oath taking within the forbidding walls of the presidential palace. All the while, however, he was negotiating with his longtime ally, the United States, for sanctuary for himself and his family. Senator Paul Laxalt, US President Ronald Reagan’s special emissary, had told him: “I think you should cut and cut cleanly.” That night, American helicopters took the Marcos family and their associates to Clark Air Base, north of Manila, where they later took a plane to exile in Hawaii. Marcos died there in 1989.

Meanwhile, the woman who never wanted to become president buckled down to work. Her first priority was the restoration of democracy, but she went about it in a counterintuitive way: she abolished the legislature, declared a revolutionary government, and appointed a fifty-member commission to write a new constitution. Cory and her advisers felt it would be too difficult to work with a parliament that was beholden to Marcos in the task of restoring democracy. In theory, a revolutionary government could do whatever it wanted, but Cory was careful not to go down that road. “I was governing alone and I could have had all the powers, but I did not [take them],” she points out. “I always abided by the Bill of Rights and I was committed and definitely dedicated to the rule of law.”

The issue of who would write a new constitution was a contentious one. If she called elections for a constitutional convention, Cory courted the danger of having Marcos loyalists control the assembly because they were the ones with money. Her vice-president, Salvador Laurel, advised her to name a dozen or so eminent Filipinos, perhaps retired Supreme Court justices. But other voices urged holding polls to show the people she was no dictator. In the end, she decided to form a fifty-member Constitutional Commission drawn from all sectors of society, including the opposition. “We tried to choose from the women’s sector, from farmers’ groups, from business, from academe,” Cory recalls. “We tried to make it as representative as possible.” And she says she never interfered in the deliberations, including the election of the body’s officers.

The new constitution, perhaps the world’s most lengthy and detailed, was completed in record time and approved overwhelmingly by the people in 1987. Elections for the newly restored Congress followed. Voters gave Cory and her allies another handsome victory, handing them twenty-two of the twenty-four available Senate seats and a big majority in the House of Representatives. Cory was still clearly beloved, but she faced extraordinary challenges. She had retained the rightist Enrile as defense chief and named the pro-American Ramos as head of the armed forces. At the same time, Cory appointed left-leaning human rights activists who were Ninoy’s allies to other key cabinet posts. Even an experienced leader would have been hard-pressed to reconcile the personal and ideological tensions between the contending camps.

And Cory, for all her personal incorruptibility and sincere desire to rule well, was a woman in the traditionally macho business of politics and government. At least in the beginning, the men she worked with saw her as a figurehead president who could be influenced to further their own agenda. With Enrile, says Cory, “I felt that he was always thinking it should be me sitting there and not you.” Laurel may have felt the same. Says Cory: “When he agreed to run as my vice-president, maybe some people told him, ‘You will, in fact, be the president because Cory Aquino doesn’t know anything about running a government. You will be calling the shots.’ In fairness to him, I did not promise that he would be prime minister. But I did not know that there would be a People Power Revolution and that I would be given the opportunity to abolish Parliament and to call for a Constitutional Commission.”

Both men harbored political ambitions. Marcos had seen Enrile as a threat to his wife Imelda’s own presidential bid and so sidelined him in the latter part of his rule. The defense minister had staged his own car ambush in 1972 to give Marcos an excuse to declare martial law. He was the patron of the military officers who formed RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement), the planner of the 1986 coup attempt that precipitated the People Power revolt. As for Laurel, he had long been positioning himself as the opposition standard-bearer. His father, Jose P. Laurel, was president during the Japanese occupation, a member of the same regime that Ninoy’s father served as House Speaker. Ninoy and Doy, as Salvador Laurel was popularly known, were childhood friends, but Doy was persuaded to join Marcos’s Kilusan ng Bagong Lipunan (KBL) party in 1978, although he later broke away.

If Enrile and Laurel thought they could manipulate Cory, they soon discovered their mistake. Cory may have been indecisive on some issues, but she was no putty in anyone’s hands. “I felt that in the end I would be the one to blame so I might as well act according to my beliefs rather than take somebody’s advice when I’m not completely convinced that that’s how to do it,” she says. Despite rumblings from Enrile and RAM, she freed top communist rebels to prove the government’s sincerity in a peaceful settlement of the insurgency. The leftists demanded the immediate closure of US military bases on Philippine soil and the abrogation of most foreign debts, but the president said all sovereign obligations must be honored. The media talked darkly about the return of dictatorship, but Cory stood pat on her decision to replace elected local officials with appointed officers-in-charge. “Can you imagine having all these mayors in Metro Manila beholden to Marcos and having control of the police?” she says. “It would have been the end of our efforts at restoring democracy.”

In November 1986, nine months after she became president, Cory did what even Marcos could not do: she let Enrile go. “You could call it my defining moment,” she says. “I decided enough is enough and I fired Johnny Ponce Enrile, which was unheard of. Even during Marcos’s time, he was often said to be thinking of firing Johnny, but was never able to do so.” To appease the Right, she also accepted the courtesy resignations of four other men, including labor minister Augusto Sanchez, whose leftist sympathies the business community blamed for the sharp rise in strikes. “I was very sorry to have to ask for [interior and local government minister] Nene Pimentel’s resignation, but he understood and he said he didn’t hold it against me,” recalls Cory. Pimentel implemented her policy of axing elected local officials. “The more important thing was to keep the country together.”

Enrile did not go gracefully into the night. He called his own version of People Power, but his supporters never reached the numbers at EDSA in 1986 and dwindled sadly away. He campaigned against the ratification of the new constitution and was rebuffed by the electorate. Still, he squeaked into the Senate in the 1987 elections made possible by the charter he opposed, one of only two oppositionists elected (the other was action star Joseph Estrada, who became president in 1998). Cory felt Enrile was not ready to give her respect and friendship. She remembers announcing to her cabinet her decision to advance her state visit to the United States. Have you been promised anything? Enrile asked pointedly, adding that Marcos never went on a state visit unless he knew exactly what he would get. “He was really so haughty,” says Cory. She went ahead with the trip and got a standing ovation from a joint session of the US Congress, plus a US$200-million grant for the Philippines.

The RAM boys, too, would not be placated. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, a young charismatic colonel who emerged as one of the heroes of EDSA in 1986, led some twelve hundred soldiers in a failed attempt to take over the government in November 1986, in a plot they called “God Save the Queen.” In August 1987, he and his followers stormed the headquarters of the armed forces and the presidential palace, but were repulsed by troops whom Ramos, now defense secretary, rallied around the presidency and the constitution. Pro-Marcos forces previously tried to wrest power, but the attempt by a section of Cory’s own military was the most serious try. Honasan fled when the coup collapsed but was captured four months later. Held in a prison ship, he managed to escape with some of his guards in 1988—to resurface in 1989 for another takeover try. That seventh and last attempt was put down with some help from the United States. Enrile was implicated in the RAM coup d’etat plots, but was never indicted.

Laurel chose to break away from Cory after the “God Save the Queen” attempt. After visiting military camps to ascertain sentiment toward government policies, he expressed support for the rebellious soldiers and resigned his post as foreign minister. Ever the politician, he may have been positioning himself as Cory’s successor if the military were to force her to resign. But the queen had no intention of stepping down, even as the self-appointed knights of the republic insisted on “saving” her. With everything that she had gone through, Cory had become fearless. She refused to leave the center of power at the height of the coups, even when her only son Benigno III was shot and wounded in the August 1987 coup attempt. Cory had pledged to restore democracy, and that meant a peaceful transfer of power to a duly elected successor when her single six-year term ended.

For all the disappointment in the collapse of the peace process, the watering down of the land reform program, and the economic problems brought on by the coup attempts, Cory can justifiably say that she completed what she had promised to do. After local elections in 1988 and village-level polls the next year, the first presidential election in decades was held as scheduled in 1992. Seven major candidates ran, including Laurel, Imelda Marcos, and Cory’s estranged cousin Eduardo Cojuangco, a wealthy business executive and staunch ally of Ferdinand Marcos. Cory backed Ramos, the EDSA hero and armed forces chief she promoted to secretary of defense in 1988. She chose to support him over House Speaker Ramon Mitra, a difficult decision because Mitra was an associate of Ninoy and the husband of one of Cory’s closest friends. “In the end, it could not be just friendship,” says Cory. “I felt that Ramos could be a better president than Monching Mitra.”

In the final act of her presidency, Cory wanted to make sure that the country’s restored democracy would not be hidebound and traditional. She was wary of career politicians and their dependence on the patronage system to win elections. Like herself, Ramos had never run for office and therefore had not accumulated too many political debts. Cory’s political instincts told her that the country was weary of traditional politicians. She was proved right when Ramos won the 1992 elections with 23.6 percent of the vote, and another nonpolitician, former judge Miriam Defensor Santiago, garnering the second largest number of votes, with 19.7 percent. Cojuangco, the pro-Marcos tycoon, was third. On June 30, 1992, Cory had the pleasure of passing on power to Fidel Ramos. “This was what my husband died for; he had returned precisely to forestall an illegal political succession,” she says. “This moment is democracy’s glory; the peaceful transfer of power without bloodshed, in strict accordance with the law.”

Historians are beginning to assess the Aquino presidency. A key thesis is that the military coup attempts forced Cory to move to the right from her left-of-center position in 1986. “I will admit that I gave more time to the military because they were the biggest threat not only to me but to our democracy,” she says, although she denies she got soft on cracking down on human rights abuses. Still, Cory continued peace negotiations with communist insurgents and Muslim rebels in the south, convinced that force should be the last resort. Jose Ma. Sison, the chair of the Communist Party she ordered released, had fled to the Netherlands and continued to direct the armed struggle from there. “My line insofar as the Communists and Muslim rebels were concerned was that we should follow the Constitution, that we cannot give more privileges or perks simply because you were against the dictator,” says Cory.

She does not regret reaching out to the insurgents. By the time she left office in 1992, the number of followers of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) had dwindled significantly. “That was a revelation to me,” says Cory. After she called a ceasefire in 1986, reports trickled in about communist foot soldiers returning to their families for Christmas and getting the see the conditions of the country for themselves. Holed up in the remote mountains, they had to rely on propaganda from their leaders. “It also made it difficult for the NPAs to extract money from the people in the countryside,” says Cory. “Because they were saying: ‘Why do we have to give you money when Cory says she’s willing to let you come back and live lives like we do?’ While the ceasefire ended and we didn’t really come to a final settlement, it did reduce the number [of Communists] and at least put a halt to their getting more supporters to their party.”

Land reform was another controversial issue. Although she belonged to a landed family, Cory seemed ready to break up huge haciendas and distribute plots to the landless with a pro-poor Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). But she chose to let Congress determine CARP’s final outline instead of legislating the plan in the brief time she headed a revolutionary government. Some in her cabinet objected on the grounds that landlords would almost surely dominate Congress. The body did water down many of CARP’s tougher provisions, allowing the distribution of stocks instead of land, for example. But Cory argues that it was still a superior program. “My predecessors had not included [land planted to] sugar and coconut, but under my administration they were included. We went about the business of giving not only land to the farmer beneficiaries but, more importantly, my directions were for the government financial institutions to give the necessary credit support.”

Her critics charged that she opted to pass the legislation on to the pro-landlord Congress to protect the Cojuangco family’s Hacienda Luisita. “We did something different in Luisita,” Cory counters. “Whereas farmer-beneficiaries have to pay for the land or the stocks they got, the Luisita workers were getting stocks for free. They were also going to be given a percentage of the gross sales. More than 90 percent voted for the stock-option plan, where they become owners. They all realized that to run a sugar plantation, unlike rice farming, requires a lot of capital.” You cannot please everybody, she says philosophically. “Given our limited resources, it could not have been all accomplished in my time. What I hope for is that each administration, more and more will be done and that each succeeding administration will be more successful than the previous ones.”

As Cory tells it, the key reason for her decision not to legislate land reform was the inadequate time for broad-based consultations on the merits and implications of such a far-reaching program. She had a self-imposed deadline of just one year as head of a revolutionary government and was not willing to extend it. The irony was that some of the people who fought for the restoration of democracy now wanted her to use her dictatorial powers to impose her own vision of agrarian reform. “People were saying I was going so slowly,” she says. “The problem was that Filipinos had gotten so used to dictatorship [that allowed] the president to do anything and everything. And then here I come and I’m talking about due process. But this is what democracy is all about.” Cory aimed to govern from the bottom up. “I wanted people to have a real sense of what it is like to govern themselves, to live out, not just live under, the democracy they had put in place.”

But there are limits to government by consultation, especially one that has yet to find its feet after decades of authoritarian rule. In the wake of the God Save the Queen plot, Cory started to take unilateral decisions, turning her presidency into a Committee of One to combat perceptions of drift in governance. “It was a step forward in political stability, but a step backward in political maturity,” she admits. On occasion, Cory also felt the freewheeling media needed restraining. She put her foot down on government-run television airing an interview with the fugitive Honasan, but did not intervene when a private station aired the scoop. “I was saying, ‘Look, I’m not a masochist and I’m not about to allow a government-run television station to air the side of the enemy.” Pardoned by President Ramos, Honasan won a seat in the Senate in 1995. “We always have a tendency to forgive or, at the very least, to forget,” sighs Cory.

She considers free secondary schooling as one of her greatest accomplishments. “It made a difference in the lives of the people because so many really just had to drop out of elementary school and had no chance to go on for secondary education,” she says. Her government also raised the salaries of teachers, although not as much as she wanted because of limited resources. “My problem was with the foreign debt,” says Cory. “My critics were saying, ‘If only she would repudiate [it] and use the money for education and social welfare.’ Yes, of course it would have helped a lot in the short term, but I was telling them, ‘Look, after my husband’s assassination, the Marcos dictatorship called for a moratorium on payments and the interest rate was as high as 50 percent. Everything just stopped. Factories were limited either to one shift of even closed down and everything had to be bought with cash. There was no credit.’ It was so important for the Philippines to regain its place in the international financial community.”

That was Cory the financial manager talking. Her critics thought she was listening too much to her financial advisers, but in fact the president knew what she was about. “In time, every president understands that you don’t deal with a problem by itself,” she says. “A problem cannot be dealt with in isolation of other requirements of government.” A president must also learn how to bow to the inevitable, as Cory had to do with the negotiations on the renewal of the US lease on its military bases in the Philippines. After keeping her options open, she signaled her support for the ratification of a 1991 treaty allowing the Americans continued access to the installation for ten years, with the option to renew for another ten. The Senate voted 12-11 against the agreement and the Americans were out of the country by 1992.

For Cory, perhaps the hardest lesson was that personal ties must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good. After the God Save the Queen coup attempt, the calls for the resignation of her left-leaning executive secretary, Ninoy lawyer Joker Arroyo, became more insistent. Cory considered finance minister Jaime Ongpin a personal friend, but the Left regarded the businessman’s appointment to the cabinet as too eager to appease Washington and the country’s international creditors. In both cases, Cory complied.

Then there were the natural disasters that were particularly vicious during her term. A massive earthquake in 1990 and super typhoon Thelma in 1991 brought untold misery. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo, also in 1991, destroyed three major regions and caused temperatures around the world to drop by one degree. “People who said that the peaceful People Power revolution that restored democracy was a gift of God began to wonder about Him and his habits of giving,” Cory observes. She never wavered in her faith. Her critics said she prayed too much, but the widow who found greater strength in God through the difficult years of her husband’s imprisonment says no one can pray too much. “I believe that God does not send us problems that we cannot handle,” she once told a reporter. “Each of us must do what God expects of us. I try my best to adjust to whatever circumstances are and I will not shrink from whatever is before me.”

The Essential Cory Aquino: The Young Cory

Although a member of the Cojuangco, Sumulong, and Aquino political clans, the former president never aspired to political office. She always saw her role as a supportive wife to Ninoy, the political arch foe of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator Corazon Aquino blamed for her husband’s death and whom she replaced as president. Born in Manila on January 25, 1933, she was the sixth of eight children (of whom two died in infancy) of Jose Cojuangco, a former congressman, and Demetria Sumulong Cojuangco, a pharmacist. Both her grandfathers were also legislators. As a girl, Cory, as she is popularly known, remembers handing out cigars and cigarettes to political leaders and their supporters who visited her father at election time. For the most part, however, her life revolved around school, church, and vacations in Antipolo in Rizal Province, the Sumulong bailiwick, and in Tarlac, where the Cojuangcos owned huge tracts of land.

It was Grandfather Sumulong—Cory called him Lolo (Grandpa) Juan—who encouraged the little girl to read. “His eyesight was getting bad,” she recalls. “I was seven or eight and I would read the newspapers to him.” A nationalist who believed that the elite should not dominate Philippine politics, Lolo Juan died when Cory was about to turn nine. But the senator’s influence lived on. “My grandfather insisted that all of us learn Tagalog [the dialect on which the national language is based] first before we learned English,” says Cory. “I continued this practice, so all my children were taught or spoken to in Tagalog. I’m proud of the fact that all of us are fluent in Tagalog.” She also learned to interact with ordinary folks from the down-to-earth maternal side of the family. “We got a taste of what it was like doing what other people did,” she recounts, from eating halo-halo, the iced dessert of Antipolo’s masses, to trying out the gambling game beto-beto with a street-smart cousin.

While the Sumulongs have been in the Philippines for generations, Cory’s paternal relatives, the Cojuangcos, trace their roots to Fujian Province. Her great-grandfather, Jose Cojuangco, left China for the Philippines in 1836. Diligent and thrifty, the Chinese immigrant saved his earnings as a junk dealer to buy land for a small rice mill in Paniqui town in Tarlac. Jose became an influential man. His son and Cory’s paternal grandfather, Melecio Cojuangco, was voted to the country’s First Congress in 1898, when Filipino revolutionaries declared independence from Spain, only to see the Americans become the new colonial power. Melecio died young, so Cory never knew here paternal grandfather. It was Melecio’s spinster sister Ysidra, known to the Cojuangco kids as Lola (Grandma) Ysidra, who filled the void at the family enterprise. By the 1920s, the Cojuangcos had interests in rice, sugar, and banking.

Jose Cojuangco, the patriarch, was so eager to be assimilated into Philippine society that he did not teach Melecio and his sisters to speak Chinese. “That’s one thing that all of us regret,” Cory says. When she became president years later, Cory made a point of touring her great-grandfather’s home village on a state visit to China. For all their wealth, however, the Cojuangcos remained hardworking. Ysidra insisted on an early day for everyone. “Your children will not amount to much if they wake up late,” she would admonish Cory’s parents. “Late for her was waking up with the sun,” recalls Cory. “She would always be sweeping floors in the rice mill, even if she didn’t have to do that. She was really a workaholic.” Cory’s father, named Jose after the patriarch from Fujian, managed the family sugar mill and later headed Philippine Bank of Commerce, the country’s first Filipino-owned bank, which the Cojuangcos set up with two other prominent families.

Cory has fond memories of her father. “He was the kindest person that I have ever lived with or met,” she says. “He was a very indulgent father, but at the same time he would not contradict my mother in her disciplining of us. But I knew, and all of us knew, that we could always get extras from my father.” Demetria was the disciplinarian. She doled out very small cash allowances and recycled outgrown clothes for the younger kids. “I was the third daughter [of four girls], so by the time the blue school uniform got to me, it was almost gray,” laughs Cory. “I suppose my mother believed that there was nothing wrong with being frugal and for us to really appreciate the hard work that both she and my father went into to make life comfortable for us.” Like Ysidra, Demetria worked hard despite her affluent background. Before she married, she opened a small drugstore to put her pharmacy degree to use. “While she was supportive of my father, she was also her own person,” says Cory. “She was not about to be intimidated or overwhelmed by my father and his family.” Demetria had the Filipino pedigree, while Jose had the greater wealth. When the wedding was announced, the people of Antipolo referred to Jose as “some Chinaman.” The scale and magnificence of the nuptials showed that Jose knew how to splurge on special occasions, a traditional Filipino trait. The Cojuangcos brought all their cooks from Tarlac for the grand reception. “To top that, they invited people from Manila and Antipolo to go to Tarlac, so my father’s family hired a train. My father was wanting to tell them: ‘Look, she married somebody. . . not only substantial, but also someone who’s been a Filipino for quite some time.’”

Doing well at one’s studies was important in the Cojuangco household. The eldest son, Pedro Cojuangco, was held up as a role model because he was always at or near the top of his class. After coasting during the early grades, Cory herself graduated valedictorian of her elementary school. The Cojuangcos also stressed religion and family togetherness. “On Sunday we would go to Lourdes Church,” Cory recalls of the period before World War II. “We would ride together in the car and all of us would sit in one long pew. My father and mother both made it a rule that all of us would go to mass on Sundays together.” During the Japanese occupation, the brood walked to the chapel at De La Salle school, which was not so far from the family home in Manila’s Malate district. They did other things together as well, including going to the movies. “It prepared us for difficult times.”

The first of those trying periods came during World War II. Cory was six weeks away from her ninth birthday when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 8, 1941. The family evacuated to Antipolo that afternoon, but returned to Manila when it was declared an open city on December 26. Grandfather Sumulong died on January 9, 1942. He was sixty-six. “That was my first experience with somebody close dying,” says Cory. “He had tuberculosis and according to one of my aunts, my mother’s sister-in-law, he had vomited blood.” Lolo Juan was a big loss for the young girl. “I don’t have any remembrance of him being strict or mean. All I have are good memories of him. I shone in his eyes. I wasn’t one of my grandmother’s favorites because I didn’t like to help setting the dishes on the table or working in the kitchen. With my grandfather, he seemed to appreciate that I could read well.”

But the young are resilient and Cory came to her own during the Japanese occupation. She determined to do better in school. “Suddenly it hit me that, yes, this might be the end of something,” she says. “I decided I’d really put my heart and soul into [my studies]. So you might say I react well in a crisis.” Saint Scholastica’s College, the Roman Catholic private school the four Cojuangco girls attended, was bombed in the dying days of the war so Cory transferred to Assumption College for her first year of high school. The German nuns at Saint Scholastica stressed religion and reading. The more relaxed French nuns at Assumption focused on raising the social consciousness of their charges and teaching them how to think and act like ladies. “St. Scholastica’s was a very strict school,” Cory recounts. “But we, who were studying there, felt that we were really learning more than other girls in other schools.”

Like all schoolchildren at that time, Cory had to learn Japanese. Once she was chosen to recite a Japanese poem in front of Japanese soldiers in a hospital and was rewarded a big prize—a bag of sugared peanuts. It was a treat for a young girl because food was scarce in Japanese-occupied Philippines, even for the affluent. The Cojuangcos had to ration their rice—one cup for each family member, and perhaps a tiny piece of chicken. Some of the family supplies were smuggled to the Filipino underground resistance and to a Sumulong relative who was one of the thousands of men forced by the Japanese to march to the Capas military camp in Tarlac, north of Manila. Their poorer neighbors in Manila also received free or subsidized food. When the desperate Japanese became more brutal as the fortunes of war turned against them, the family left the capital for a nipa hut with no running water in the tiny town of San Mateo in Rizal Province.

The Cojuangcos were back in Manila when the Americans returned in 1945. They stayed at the Sumulong house in Sampaloc district and were preparing to transfer to their home near De La Salle College when rumors of street fighting circulated. The De La Salle school buildings had thick walls and the Cojuangcos would be joining their paternal uncle Antonio and his family. But the move was aborted because the family’s two horses were stolen. It turned out that De La Salle, which the Japanese had sequestered, was no safe haven. Forced to retreat as the Americans advanced, the Japanese went on a killing rampage and massacred many innocent civilians in the area. “My uncle was killed together with his wife, one son, one daughter, and a daughter-in-law, along with some of the Christian Brothers of De La Salle,” Cory recounts. Goria, her beloved nanny, also perished along with four other helpers. “Our neighbors said they could hear them shouting and crying; they were apparently tied to the iron grills. Later, we were able to recover their remains and they were buried in our family plot in Tarlac. From that time, my father knew we would never live in that neighborhood again.”

A year after the war ended, the Cojuangco children were sent to the United States to study. The Assumption-run Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia agreed to accept the three younger girls. (The two eldest children enrolled in college in New York, while the youngest, Jose Jr., was sent to a military academy in Manhattan.) The private boarding school had one famous alumna at that time—the movie star Grace Kelly, who later became Princess Grace of Monaco. Thirteen-year-old Cory and her sisters were rail thin from the ravages of the war. “My mother asked the nuns: ‘Can you please give them extra food?’ That meant drinking five or six glasses of milk in one day.” And lots of potatoes, although there was no rice, which made the three sisters more homesick. The next year, Cory transferred to Notre Dame Convent School in New York City, where she finished high school. She went on to major in French and mathematics at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the same city.

Her seven years in the United States gave the sheltered teenager a measure of independence. “If I had gone to school [in Manila], I’d always be relying on my parents, on our driver, on our cook, on our maid,” Cory muses. “Having gone to school in the United States, I became more self-reliant.” She learned to decide things on her own, use public transport, stick to a budget, interact with ordinary Americans and people of other nationalities, and regard herself as no different from others. A poised Cory returned to Manila in 1953 to study law. She had wanted to enroll at the University of the Philippines, whose College of Law had educated many of the country’s political leaders. But because her father was chair of the board of trustees of Far Eastern University, which was also owned by her brother-in-law’s family, Cory had no choice but to go there.

A Cory Aquino Tribute "Salamat Tita Cory"

Prayer for a Happy Death (2004) by Corazon C. Aquino

Almighty God, most merciful Father
You alone know the time
You alone know the hour
You alone know the moment
When I shall breathe my last.


So remind me each day, most loving Father
To be the best that I can be
To be humble, to be kind,
To be patient, to be true,
To embrace what is good
To reject what is evil
To adore only You.


When that final moment does come
Let not my loved ones grieve for long
Let them comfort each other
And let them know how much happiness
They brought into my life.
Let them pray for me
As I will continue to pray for them,
Hoping that they will always pray for each other.
Let them know that they made possible
Whatever good I offered to our world
And let them realize that our separation
Is just for a short while
As we prepare for our reunion in eternity.


Our Father in heaven
You alone are my hope
You alone are my salvation
Thank You for Your unconditional love. Amen.

---

I have fallen in love
(Ninoy's Poem for Cory)

I have fallen in love
With the same woman three times
In a day spanning nineteen years
Of tearful joys and joyful tears
I loved her first when she was young
Enchanting, brilliant, middle-strung
Vibrant, fragrant, eternally new
Cool, invigorating as the morning dew.
Desperate, she shared, quieted my despairs
Hopeful, she fanned the fires of my hopes
Lavished me with days of bliss and peace,
Endless, perpetual days of fond memories.
She is my hope; I do not wish to realize
Hence my hope; forever green, eternal prize
My life transcending life, my ultimate quest
Dream of my life for whom I’ll spare no rest.


I fell in love again
With the same woman the second time
When first she bore her child and mine
The first fruit of our union and our love.
The pains and anguish of motherhood she braved
Loved her children, their love she deservedly craved
Times were she hung on the very brink of death,
Unflinchingly fulfilling her mission to procreate.
In politics I plunged, she was always by my side,
Steadfast, uncomplaining, helping to turn the tide,
Amidst hardship, her rare courage would not relent
She was my secret weapon, the source of my strength.
The world was my concern, our home her domain,
The people mine, the children hers to maintain,
So it was in those eighteen years and a day
Till I was detained, forced in prison to stay.


Suddenly she became our sole support
Wellspring of hope, source of comfort
On her shoulders fell the burden of life
She emerged our captain in the sea of strife.


I fell in love again
With the same woman the third time
Looming from the battle, undaunted, unafraid,
Calm composed, she is God’s lovely maid.
It has been a year of many disappointments
Endless dark nights, long days of sad lament,
Of grave doubts, frustrations, bitter desolations,
Of privations, untold indignities, humiliations.


Dreams became nightmares; hopes, despair.
Rally to freedom’s call, no one will dare.
Future is obscured, life has lost its meaning,
The tunnel is long, we’re only at the beginning.


Leaders I admired, whose advice I sought
Became fallen idols, their souls were bought,
Their conscience they bartered for “soft” convenience,
Due to despicable cowardice, they’ve lost their patience.


Leaders became dealers, begging for part of the spoils,
Forgetting the value, the essence of the hottest toil,
Paralyzed be fear, they joined the amoral dictator,
Defending, waving the bloody flag of the new oppressor.


The pillars of society became the props of tyranny,
“Be realistic,” they urged, “if not for safety, for money.”
It is useless to resist, the tyrant is too strong,
Yet aware, with their help the tyranny will prolong.


Mother Pilipinas weeps, her noble sons are gone,
Her land of the morning, is now of the setting sun,
Back to her dungeon in chains she’s been returned;
For all her sacrifices, this is what she earned.


The night is cold and dark, there are no stars,
Our prisons are full, our souls wrinkled with scars,
Afflicted, persecuted, struck down but not crushed,
How soon will this blight be erased by Allah’s brush?


My only escape is to cling to the woman of my dreams
Who gave me a life full of love, a love full of life,
She is my urge to live, my sole motivation to survive,
She taught me not only to dream, but to make dreams alive.


Fight on! She says: Let not the guiltless ghost depart.
Your pains, our people know are caused by a thousand darts,
But be assuaged, remember the Filipino, his story, his past,
Soon, very soon, the tyrant will choke in his greedy power lust!

Last respects for Cory

UPDATE (7:12 p.m.): Public access gate for Cory public viewing moved to LSGH Gate 4 from Gate 5.

MANILA - Despite intermittent rains, hundreds of mourners on Saturday are lining up at the historic La Salle Green Hills (LSGH) gymnasium to pay their last respects to former President Corazon Aquino.

The remains of Aquino were brought to the LSGH gymnasium in Mandaluyong City Saturday afternoon, where the wake and public viewing is currently taking place.

After Aquino's coffin was placed on the catafalque at the gym's center, a short mass, attended by the deceased's close friends, relatives, and a handful of nuns and priests, was officiated by Bishop Teodoro Bacani.

"Let us go keeping Cory alive in our hearts," Bacani said at the end of the mass.

Yellow confetti showered the coffin as it entered the LSGH gymnasium, being carried by honor guards.

The convoy accompanying her remains arrived at the LSGH at 3:35 p.m.

Aquino's remains, accompanied by relatives and close friends, were carried aboard a black hearse. The convoy left the Heritage Park in Taguig City at around 3:15 p.m.

Aquino's body was brought to the Heritage Park after she died at 3:18 a.m. at the Makati Medical Center. A private mass for the Aquino family was also held at the park.

The public viewing at the LSGH started at 5 p.m. Saturday, and will continue until Monday. The daily viewing schedule will be until 4 a.m., and will then resume on 7 a.m. There will also be a mass at the LSGH at 8 p.m. Saturday.

During the duration of the wake, there will be Catholic Masses daily at 12 noon and 8 p.m.

For those who will go to the LSGH, the line for the public viewing will start and end at the school's Gate 4. The LSGH administration decided to move the public access gate to Gate 4 from Gate 5.

Family members, VIP guests and members of the media will enter and exit at the LSGH Gate 6. LSGH Gate 2 is also a designated entry and exit point for media.

On Tuesday up until Wednesday, a necrological service, an overnight vigil, and a requiem will be held at the Manila Cathedral. The exact times of these activities will be announced later.

On Wednesday, Aquino will be buried at the Manila Memorial Park after a 9 a.m. mass at the cathedral. She will be buried beside her late husband, Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr.

Kris Aquino says she doesn’t feel burned out despite her busy schedule

Araw-araw kung makita si Kris Aquino sa telebisyon dahil sa dalawa niyang show, ang Showbiz News Ngayon at Pinoy Bingo Night. Tuwing weekends naman, napapanood din siya sa showbiz-oriented talk show na The Buzz. Bukod pa roon, she is also a mother to two boys, Joshua and Baby James and a wife to basketball player James Yap. Gayunpaman, sinabi ni Kris na never niyang naramdaman ang pagka-burn out. Aniya, malaki ang naitutulong ng pagiging masaya sa ginagawa niya and she is happy with her personal and professional life. “Kasi, number one (source of happiness) talaga ‘yung mga anak ko, constant source of joy talaga,” simula ni Kris. “Alam mo ‘yung joy na yon, at this point both of them talaga they would still prefer my company over any body else, ‘yun ang bongga don. And then mula two years old (ako), it’s not an exaggeration to say that this is what I wanted to be doing. So very few people I think are blessed to have the career that they wanted as a child. ‘Yung dream mo ‘di ba? So ‘yun eh. So hindi talaga ako nabu-burn out.”

Hindi naman ipinagkaila ni Kris na may mga times na talagang nadi-drain siya dahil sa haba ng oras ng pagtatrabaho pero hindi siya nagrereklamo. “Alam mo my bad days lang naman talaga are Tuesdays and Wednesdays kasi ‘yun ‘yung talagang from 10 am to midnight (ako nagtatrabaho). But I have Saturdays off unless I’m shooting a commercial kasi ‘yung Saturdays ko kailangan mag-mass at 6:00 pm and mag-dinner in the event na hindi kaya ng Sunday,” pag-amin ni Kris. Pagdating naman umano ng Linggo ay nagbo-bonding silang pamilya pagkatapos ng trabaho niya sa The Buzz. “Sunday after The Buzz, eat-out time with the kids. They get to choose kung saan (kakain) but they’re both into Japanese so dadalawang restaurants lang ang iniikutan namin every Sunday night na pati siguro ‘yung mga waiters nagsawa na sa amin.”

Dalawang beses naman sa isang buwan ay nagbo-bonding naman sila ng kanyang hubby na si James. Ani Kris, they get to watch movies every other week and sometimes dinadala nila ang mga bata. Bukod din sa mahal ni Kris ang kanyang ginagawa, inamin din niya na nakakakuha siya ng sapat na pahinga para sa pang-araw-araw na gawain. “I love to sleep more than eating. I can skip meals but I can’t skip sleep. Ang problema dun nga, it takes one and half to two hours (before I can sleep at night kasi) ‘yung adrenaline kasi ang taas. So mga 1:30 AM to 2:00 o’clock AM pa ko nakakatulog.”

Top US diplomat tells Aquino: Get well

MANILA, Philippines – US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton sent a note to the family of former President Corazon Aquino wishing her a fast recovery from colon cancer, Washington’s envoy to Manila said.

United States Ambassador Kristie Kenney said she handed over Clinton’s letter to the Aquino family on Wednesday.

On the same day, Kenney attended a healing mass for the world democracy icon at the Manila City Hall on Wednesday, which was organized by city Mayor Alfredo Lim.

“I am here for a special reason, because not just myself and the government of the United States but several millions of Americans are praying for President Cory. I am here to represent them,” Kenney told reporters.

“I also brought today to the Aquino family a personal letter from US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to President Cory wishing her a fast recovery,” Kenney said.

“I think she (Aquino) has many contributions. One is for being strong in the face of adversity, and being true to her beliefs in freedom and liberty and certainly her faith as well. She's always for Filipinos first. These are great contributions not only for leaders, but for many Filipino citizens,” the envoy added.

Aquino is battling stage 4 colon cancer. On Tuesday night, she called all of her five children to her bedside, her youngest daughter, television host Kris Aquino, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

The former president’s spokesperson, Deedee Siytangco said after the mass in Manila that Aquino was “stable” and her vital signs were “okay” even as her appetite had not improved.

Siytangco also cautioned the public against rumors on Aquino’s health.

“I know the public needs to know, but if there are rumors -- I know there are -- just ignore it, unless you hear it from us,” she said.

Apart from City Hall officials and employees, most of whom came dressed in Aquino's signature yellow, former Malacañang protocol officer Miguel Perez Rubio and former Senate President Franklin Drilon, also attended the mass.

Cory Aquino calls her 5 kids to bedside

MANILA, Philippines—The ailing Corazon Aquino called all her five children to her bedside on Tuesday night, according to her youngest daughter.

“Last night, we were all here [at Makati Medical Center]. I called all my siblings after my mom asked for all of us to be together,” TV host and actress Kris Aquino said Wednesday in a text message to the Inquirer.

Aquino, 76, was diagnosed with colon cancer early in 2008 and has been confined at the hospital since June for loss of appetite.

Her other children are Ma. Elena “Ballsy” Cruz, Victoria Elisa “Viel” Dee, Aurora Corazon “Pinky” Abellada and Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

The former President remains in stable condition, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco told reporters after the third of five healing Masses was celebrated Wednesday at Manila City Hall.

“As far as I know, she’s stable [and] her vital signs are okay. But her appetite has not improved,” said Siytangco, who urged the public to ignore nasty rumors about Aquino’s condition.

Siytangco said the Aquino family had promised to update her.

“They promised to call if anything changes,” she said. “I know the public needs to know, but if there are rumors—I know there are—just ignore them. You [will hear updates] from us.”

Letter from Hillary

Masses for Aquino’s healing have been celebrated at Manila City Hall since Monday.

US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, Ambassador Miguel Perez Rubio and former Senate President Franklin Drilon were among those who attended Wednesday’s noon Mass along with Manila City Hall officials and employees, most of whom came dressed in Aquino’s signature yellow.

Kenney later told reporters that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had sent a letter to Aquino.

“I am here for a special reason, because not just myself and the government of the United States but also several millions of Americans are praying for President Cory. I am here to represent them,” Kenney said.

The ambassador added: “I also brought today to the Aquino family a personal letter from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Cory wishing for her fast recovery.

“I think she has made many contributions. One is for being strong in the face of adversity, and being true to her beliefs in freedom and liberty, and certainly her faith as well. She’s always for Filipinos first. These are great contributions not only for leaders, but also for many Filipino citizens.”

Siytangco said the letter—“a personal note, an offering of prayers”—was delivered to Aquino by her former appointments secretary, Margie Juico, who was also at the healing Mass.

More Masses

Another healing Mass was celebrated by Fr. Greg Banaga at Adamson University Wednesday at 5 p.m.

An “alay na dasal ng mga mahihirap” (offering of prayers by the poor) is scheduled on July 26 at 9 a.m. at Sto. Niño Church in Tondo, Manila.

It is being organized by former President Joseph Estrada.