the true icon of democracy

i don’t know if i love cory the way people love her when they stood and walked under the fickle weather to pay their last respects, or when they cried as her cortege slowly passed them, or when they shouted “i love cory” while waving the “laban” sign with outstretched hand.

i don’t know if i like her the way people like her when they talk about her administration, how they respect her for all she was as a president, how they have such fond memories of her simplicity, honesty and purity.

i don’t know her. i was only six when she took office and twelve when she left. looking back to a very inconvenient time in our history, i think cory was a bright yellow convenience. truly it was the people’s power, not her. it was the people who gathered and toppled a massively disliked power called marcos. cory was just at the right place at the right time, the victim who the people placed as a hero against a villain. it was the people who made her an icon.

the filipino people should be the hero. the filipino people should be the icon of democracy.

i wish to see us, filipinos, and the whole world to acknowledge that. i wish to see us fulfill the real democracy, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. i wish us to see that it is not of one person that we regained democracy, that it was of us, by us and for us.