Yellow Courage

The sadness that millions have in their hearts as they pray for President Cory Aquino, who continues her valiant battle against cancer, casts a pall on the national psyche. Masses are said everywhere and around the metropolis as in other parts of the country, buildings, homes and cars are festooned with yellow ribbons. All this returns us to a time when Filipinos embraced the color yellow to mark the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship.

Cory, the suffering widow of a slain opposition leader, rose to the challenge of a nation yearning for a voice of moral authority and steadfast leadership.  She never sought formal power as her husband and politicians would have, but it was overwhelmingly handed to her by a people who saw in her courage and plain-spoken bearing the clarity of moral ascendancy.  

And when the time came for her relinquish power, surviving several bloody coup attempts, she proudly transferred the reins of the presidency to her successor.  “This is the essence of democratic rule,” she intoned, setting a bar for a fledgling democracy to live up to the promise of a people-powered revolution that ended years of authoritarian rule.

Having come of age at the twilight years of the Marcos dictatorship and bearing witness to the return of democracy in 1986, my own personal sense of the country’s history is closely tied to the persona of Cory Aquino and what she represented for all of us.  I believe that the deep melancholy of a country that comes from seeing such a historic icon fall ill and fight for her life mirrors a people’s own longing for an era when they tapped into their own wellsprings of goodness and giftedness.  

When President Cory passes on, a part of us and the sense of purpose that defined our ‘people-power’ generation will also pass on.  That is why there is a deeper national pathos this time.  It is more than seeing a beloved leader bowing out of life.  It is about a people, at a time of malaise and widespread social distrust, mourning for many of the lost possibilities that Cory’s bravery and example had awakened in us over two decades ago.

For, indeed, we see how the fruits of a democracy she has fought so hard to restore and consolidate can now be so brazenly abused and manipulated by leaders who seek only personal power and short-term gain.  In a recent rally against Con-Ass a grandson read her emphatic message of lament: how our so-called representatives and elected leaders can only think of themselves and saving their positions of power, and how we are seeing such a dearth of malasakit para sa bayan (love of country).  

Cory and 1986 formed a generation of martial law babies who finally came to see a sea change in government, a monumental transition from dictatorship to freedom. But it has been Cory’s unassailable integrity, her unyielding commitment to making the ways of democracy work through the independent functioning of its institutions, that bear their mark in a people’s consciousness.

As cancer assaults her body, we bewail, as one writer points out, how a social cancer of patronage and corruption has taken over our body politic. We bemoan the fact that the personal decency she brought to public affairs and the running of government is so direly lacking today.  We decry how much doublespeak there is in the official statements of our leaders, a stark contrast to the simple, straightforward, honest ways with which she spoke to the Filipino people.  

We see it in how gracefully and gratefully she bid the nation farewell when she delivered her final State of the Nation Address in 1991 – “maraming salamat at paalam” – and compare it to a haughtiness of a leader who gives mixed signals about clinging on to power beyond 2010.  

It is one of life’s ironies that in sickness we find our strength, and that in losing something of value we regain what is essential.  I choose to see Cory’s present agony in this light.  Even as we contemplate the possibility of her leaving us, we can rejoice in the lasting gift of her leadership -- and the enduring light of her courage and example.  

As a grateful people and a generation that has been thus blessed, we will carry on the fight of one Corazon C. Aquino.

Neric Acosta, professor at the Asian Institute of Management, was congressman of Bukidnon from 1998-2007 and is member of the UP class of 1986, which had as its commencement speaker the new People Power-installed president of the country, Corazon Aquino.

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