Cory Aquino lives in my heart

We are unsure when life will spring life-changing moments on us, but when they do it is surely a measure of our character as to how we respond. However the old saying goes,' Adversary does not build character, it reveals it'.

Corazon Aquino who died today revealed her character when she realised that she had to emerge from the shadows and honour her murdered husband, and the future he believed in, by running in opposition against President Marcos. It is interesting to speculate what must have been going through her mind when she was asked to run in the presidential elections. Never having taken the limelight before, the self proclaimed 'housewife' would in subsequent years clean up the nation and raise people's hopes in a similar fashion to the way she cleaned her house and raised her children. What direction the People's Power Revolution would have taken without her is anybody's guess, but her ascension to the the pinnacle of the opposition to the Marcos Regime reveals a character that can be compared to not only the great politicians of our age, but also the greatest of people.

Her story reminds me of Cinncinatus, the Roman citizen who was asked by the senators to take power of the Empire to quell uprisings and restore order. Subsequently Julius Caesar was to take the post and never give up the power that he had been entrusted with. Needless to say the Senators were apprehensive with affording a man - a mortal, corruptible man -with so much power. They needn't have worried as after successfully fulfilling his mandate, Cinncinatus relinquished his power and returned to the farm and his life in which the Senators had first found him, to live out his days in happiness.

Aquino had suffered through many hardships before her rise to power in the Philippines - her husbands imprisonment, sickness and assassination - but still she stepped down at the end of her term with decorum and ensured, similarly to Nelson Mandela, that democracy was respected and assured in her nation. Her great character, as with Cinncinatus and Mandela, allowed her to step up and be counted, to realise that no matter how hard it seemed that she needed to grasp the moment. Many will argue whether this fearlessness, this strong moral intergrity, is caught or taught, or is indeed from nature or nurture. However more important is a realisation that when these life-changing moments arise, you cannot allow fear and uncertainty to diverge you from the path which you know is right.

The Pinoy was worth dying for. The Pinoy was worth overcoming one's fear for.

Cory Aquino lives in my heart.