Cory did not deserve those yellow ribbons. Those were touchy-feely artifacts. The kind that one sends to a puppy love. But not to a tough woman. Cory was a tough woman. She was tough because of the principles she held on to, stubbornly perhaps, but nevertheless as steadfast in the manner male politicians would rarely show.
I never met Cory. In fact, I never thought she was the one needed to drive away the dictator.
The first time I heard her name being talked about was in a circle of individuals with enough wealth to allow them to leave the country anytime. The kind of persons who could tell you, "this country is going to the dogs I might as well go to the land where dogs are pampered."
When at last, she was pushed onto the political center stage, I then convinced myself the upper- and middle-class kind of thinking had won over again. Then one day, on vacation from the refugee camp, I found myself in this rally, as huge as judgment day. On the stage this woman was taunting the dictator. For days now, the media machinery of the conjugal dictatorship had been telling the people that this Cory was incapable. That she would eventually give up. There she was, the bravest of them all, asking Marcos that if he believed she was not powerful enough as a candidate, why was he stomping the countryside to get the vote of the people.
By this time, too, Marcos remained in the palace. It could not be hidden that he was not well. On the burly shoulders of his bodyguard, what looked like an early victory ride was really a ploy that it was easier for him to be lifted than for him to be allowed to walk on his own.
The dictator left; the woman became the president.
We talked of the so-called "revolution" at that stretch of a highway in the major city of the country as 'miracle." Months after, news and information filtering in told us that there were other hands on those days that the uprising took place. Still, we in the city were proud of ourselves and of the changes we have brought ourselves. No one bothered to check if the countryside was also in that change?
People expected miracles to take place. The once popular woman was now becoming unpopular. Manila, in particular, and the media people based there, started to question Cory. There was no honeymoon between her and the media. There was only this unrealistic expectation that after the miracle should come the Paradise.
The rise in the price of the commodities was being blamed upon her. The galunggong or mackerel became the index for how she ran the government and the economy. No one realized then that the reason they could say those things because one woman brought back press freedom. Lifestyle editors started assessing her politics by her fashion sense. Artists and patron of the arts questioned her lack of priority for cultural programs missing as they were then already of the flamboyant importation Imelda was cruelly famous for.
This week, the entire nation and the whole of Manila came back to their senses: the woman was real. She was imperfect but she had guts and she possessed that thing we have already transformed into a sentimental material: moral.
A state funeral was set aside. Great music and grand speeches were made. The singers and the word masters all had to apologize: their songs and their words were much to gilded for this woman who was really a simple individual.
The yellow ribbons did not make sense. The confetti could have been tears that were shed the last moment. She needed the ribbons to be untied and the confetti to be cleaned up because to act was better. Manila, in particular, had left her quite early even when she had not done anything yet. People around her abandoned the cause too soon because they could not make her do things their way. She became the housewife and that was a curse.
We were wrong. Or, at least we saw our error in judgment.
The woman is gone and we are sadder. But, at least, it is perhaps clearer now that Cory was the true gentleman in this republic of where male politicians, beside her, are now the lesser mortals.