I guess I wanted some distance from the actual event. I want some distance from the emotional outpouring and the heavy mourning that has blanketed the nation since she died last week. Emotion and sentiment cloud too many minds as it stands nowadays.
Who was Corazon Aquino, and why does her passing leave such a mark? All the official news organs describe her as a former president. But was her presidency the reason why she is remembered as some democratic Prometheus remade? I was young and stupid then, but I do not remember such a good reign during her term. I remember the coups, but I most especially remember the blackouts. Corazon Aquino's presidency, if it had been any other person, would have been judged a disaster. Her weakness led to her position being threatened militarily no less than seven times. Military adventurists may have gotten a taste of it during the first EDSA revolution, but they honed their craft in the age of Cory. Her economic reform was not much better. Land reform was derailed by her own unwillingness to carve up her family's hacienda (incidentally, the largest in Luzon, I think), and the economy was in bad shape when she left it. Most notably, she left the energy utilities sector in shambles, leading to an age of rationed power and regularly scheduled blackouts befitting a country recovering from war, not a country on the rise after a bloodless revolution. So, if it is by her Presidency that we remember Corazon Aquino, then she must be remembered poorly.
Those who praise her usually abandon the generalized mushy sentiment just long enough to cite two concrete events; her role in the overthrow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the peaceful transition of power after her presidency. But, notice that both events lie outside her presidency, with the former coming before it and the latter coming in its termination. This should give an indication of her place in the collective memory. She is most fondly remembered for taking power and relinquishing it, not for exercising it. In that sense, she is not the Philippine Cicero, trumpeting the virtue and nobility of the Republic from her lips and deeds. If any, Corazon Aquino fulfilled, as practically every other president before her fulfilled, the dream of Manuel Quezon of a Philippines run like hell by Filipinos. (Hey, as long as its not a white guy, am I right?) No, Corazon Aquino is something much greater than that. She is our Cincinnatus, someone whom even power cannot corrupt to the purposes of power. Like Cincinnatus, she will be an icon whose virtues will seem so unbelievable that in the near future, her existence may be dismissed (or elevated, as it may be) as myth. Cincinnatus was a farmer who became a senator and dictator, then relinquished the rods and axe to become a farmer again. Corazon Aquino was a housewife who became president, then became a (sort of) housewife again. This is the stuff myths are made off, and there was no more potent "myth" about the virtues of the Roman Republic than the one embodied by the (very real) virtue of Cincinnatus. The same thing may be said of Corazon Aquino, some day.
What stood out for me the most in my memories of the late Corazon Aquino was how she seemed like the most unfit person for politics as we know it. Her rather "mixed" (to put it as charitably as possible) record of ruling attests to that, but there is something else. She carries herself so unassumingly, and speaks so plainly, that one can tell that power has not eclipsed the person. The last Philippine president to pull that off was the sadly short-lived Magsaysay, and even then, one can speculate that if he had lived to the end of his term, he may have been exposed as someone just like the rest of them. But there will be no such speculation with Mrs. Aquino, who came to power a simple woman of faith and left power a simple woman of faith. There is no taint of the professional politician about her. If only others who enter the corrosive fields of politics were as fortunate, to leave as themselves and not as the creatures the quest for power had turned them into. One glance at the current sad-sack crop of "presidentiable" candidates is enough to give a clue as to the toll professional politics has taken on the ones who purport to master it. One is a glorified hack whose impoverished background provides, not a source of character, but cheap demographic points. Another is a guy who pretends he cares about markets and pedicabs, when his uncalloused hands look like they've never done a decent day's work in his life. Another is a blank slate who will be whatever the voters want him to be. Another is a depraved (alleged!) lesbian masquerading as a moral force. None of these are real people, only simulacra programmed to pursue power like flies to spilt honey. If every generation of political aspirants are but derivatives of these, then I shall not wonder why Corazon Aquino, like Cincinnatus before her, will be considered a "myth" just a few generations down the line. That she kept her own person in both taking and relinquishing power will be an impossibility beyond the wildest dreams of these golems striving for power. This is why I will fondly remember her. Corazon Aquino: person.
Requiscat in Pace
1933 - 2009"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
- Gandalf the Grey, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
- Gandalf the Grey, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
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