by Agustin Martin Rodriguez
Before anything else can be said, this must be said. Yes I know that President Aquino could have and should have initiated a meaningful and comprehensive land reform initiative
. If she did, if she was willing to sacrifice Hacienda Luisita and to distribute unjustly acquired land with her revolutionary powers, she could have truly and substantially improved the lives of millions of Filipinos and perhaps set us on a road to just development. It seems that she could have, while she was popular and well loved and enjoyed the support of her nation, neutralized the influence of the traditional elite and the military and gone about instituting real political reforms that would have allowed the opening up of our systems to the effective participation of the marginalized in shaping the new republic. But for some reason, Tita Cory quickly fell under the influence and the control of the traditional elite and her military backers. For all her love of her people, she took our restored democracy and seemed to have handed it back to traditional powers. This failure makes possible the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the continued subversion of the state by self-serving politicians who distort our democratic institutions for personal gains. However, despite this, despite her being a conservative progressive who failed to respond to the revolutionary call of her time, Cory Aquino is an exemplar and a good president who deserves all the love we give her. And now that she is gone, the country seems to be a little darker and sadder especially since it is struggling to free itself from the grips of a petty tyrant.
Tita Cory is Tita Cory because she was a genuine model person in the sense Max Scheler uses
that phrase. A model person is one who bears the best possibility of our selves given the call of our times. A model person bears and realizes the best values of our humanity that the times call to surface in order to inspire a people to be their best possible selves. Isn't that what we loved about her? Despite her failures as a politician, she was the best person anyone could want to be. Her whole life was oriented toward serving her people in the best way that she knew how. She had a real concern for the systems that we restored. She inspired us to give ourselves to the higher call of our nation. Even when she was old and sick, she stood with us without any self serving motives in our struggle against those who threatened our democracy.
I personally will miss having someone in the public sphere
who can speak with such purity of intentions. Not even our religious leaders can speak so purely without being suspected of some agenda, whether it is to preserve the power of their institutions or to gain some influence with the administration. When Tita Cory spoke, we listened because we knew that she spoke from the heart despite her not-completely-progressive politics and her seeming political naiveté. Perhaps it was precisely her naiveté that made us open our hearts to her, because this naiveté was rooted in her desire to find the path to the good in all things. Beyond our political strategizing to achieve the sought for liberation of our people, Tita Cory always kept her sight on the good and the ought, and thus she reminded us what ultimately we were fighting for.
There are lessons to learn from her life. The foremost of which is that the simplest people, even those who seem to be least likely to be called to greatness, can become truly great if they are able
to discern the challenge of the times and respond to it as best as they can. Heroes are not the greatest persons in skills and abilities but they are those who can respond with courage and wisdom to the call of their fatedness. That is the great lesson of all our best fairy stories. Trust the cosmos when it invites you and it will bring you to a fullness you can never achieve yourself. But of course, to hear this challenge, you must be genuinely open and generous of heart. To find yourself, to find your place in history, you cannot be self-involved. You have to be listening to where life is calling you and respond with generosity.
The other lesson, a more painful one, that we can learn from Tita Cory is that no matter how pure your intentions are, no matter how you act with a passion for the ought, evil structures can
always subvert the good that we do. Look at how President Aquino was unable to craft a better constitution or how her push for land reform was watered down. These were all effects of structures that limited her ability to do good. At every step of the way to reform with her revolutionary government, there were traditional politicians and powerful military men always pushing for their self-interested projects. And they won because the political structures that she operated with were always slanted against the interests of the majority and always allowed a selfish and short-sighted elite to determine the national agenda. So despite the fact that President Aquino was potentially poised to realize far reaching reforms, the structures of our state and our political systems were too infected with the rot of the traditional and new elite that the democracy she rebuilt was still rotten from within. Thus GMA and her brand of politics which shamelessly undermines the state to serve her obvious interests is still possible.
Certainly, this is a good lesson to learn, We don't only need good people, we need good governance structures in order to realize our common good as a people. We need to build solidly democratic structures so that our potentials for sustainable and just development are not always stolen away by the predatory elite that continue to dominate our political and economic systems.
There's one last and best thing I think that we can learn from Tita Cory. What she taught us with her life is simply this—if you love as best as you can, as best as your human frailty allows you—people will recognize that love and love you back. Of course it's not important that they love you back—that's not the point of loving or genuine service. But love does beget love and sometimes, with the best of us, our love is infectious and can set a nation aflame. And her love did, and we burned with good will for a while. It was such a wonderful thing to live through those times when we were a people of good will who thought we could infect the world with it.
We will miss you Tita Cory, especially now that we battle with such a dangerous evil in our government. We will miss your steadfast faith and hope for that was the light with which you led us.
Before anything else can be said, this must be said. Yes I know that President Aquino could have and should have initiated a meaningful and comprehensive land reform initiative
. If she did, if she was willing to sacrifice Hacienda Luisita and to distribute unjustly acquired land with her revolutionary powers, she could have truly and substantially improved the lives of millions of Filipinos and perhaps set us on a road to just development. It seems that she could have, while she was popular and well loved and enjoyed the support of her nation, neutralized the influence of the traditional elite and the military and gone about instituting real political reforms that would have allowed the opening up of our systems to the effective participation of the marginalized in shaping the new republic. But for some reason, Tita Cory quickly fell under the influence and the control of the traditional elite and her military backers. For all her love of her people, she took our restored democracy and seemed to have handed it back to traditional powers. This failure makes possible the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the continued subversion of the state by self-serving politicians who distort our democratic institutions for personal gains. However, despite this, despite her being a conservative progressive who failed to respond to the revolutionary call of her time, Cory Aquino is an exemplar and a good president who deserves all the love we give her. And now that she is gone, the country seems to be a little darker and sadder especially since it is struggling to free itself from the grips of a petty tyrant.Tita Cory is Tita Cory because she was a genuine model person in the sense Max Scheler uses
that phrase. A model person is one who bears the best possibility of our selves given the call of our times. A model person bears and realizes the best values of our humanity that the times call to surface in order to inspire a people to be their best possible selves. Isn't that what we loved about her? Despite her failures as a politician, she was the best person anyone could want to be. Her whole life was oriented toward serving her people in the best way that she knew how. She had a real concern for the systems that we restored. She inspired us to give ourselves to the higher call of our nation. Even when she was old and sick, she stood with us without any self serving motives in our struggle against those who threatened our democracy.I personally will miss having someone in the public sphere
who can speak with such purity of intentions. Not even our religious leaders can speak so purely without being suspected of some agenda, whether it is to preserve the power of their institutions or to gain some influence with the administration. When Tita Cory spoke, we listened because we knew that she spoke from the heart despite her not-completely-progressive politics and her seeming political naiveté. Perhaps it was precisely her naiveté that made us open our hearts to her, because this naiveté was rooted in her desire to find the path to the good in all things. Beyond our political strategizing to achieve the sought for liberation of our people, Tita Cory always kept her sight on the good and the ought, and thus she reminded us what ultimately we were fighting for.There are lessons to learn from her life. The foremost of which is that the simplest people, even those who seem to be least likely to be called to greatness, can become truly great if they are able
to discern the challenge of the times and respond to it as best as they can. Heroes are not the greatest persons in skills and abilities but they are those who can respond with courage and wisdom to the call of their fatedness. That is the great lesson of all our best fairy stories. Trust the cosmos when it invites you and it will bring you to a fullness you can never achieve yourself. But of course, to hear this challenge, you must be genuinely open and generous of heart. To find yourself, to find your place in history, you cannot be self-involved. You have to be listening to where life is calling you and respond with generosity.The other lesson, a more painful one, that we can learn from Tita Cory is that no matter how pure your intentions are, no matter how you act with a passion for the ought, evil structures can
always subvert the good that we do. Look at how President Aquino was unable to craft a better constitution or how her push for land reform was watered down. These were all effects of structures that limited her ability to do good. At every step of the way to reform with her revolutionary government, there were traditional politicians and powerful military men always pushing for their self-interested projects. And they won because the political structures that she operated with were always slanted against the interests of the majority and always allowed a selfish and short-sighted elite to determine the national agenda. So despite the fact that President Aquino was potentially poised to realize far reaching reforms, the structures of our state and our political systems were too infected with the rot of the traditional and new elite that the democracy she rebuilt was still rotten from within. Thus GMA and her brand of politics which shamelessly undermines the state to serve her obvious interests is still possible.Certainly, this is a good lesson to learn, We don't only need good people, we need good governance structures in order to realize our common good as a people. We need to build solidly democratic structures so that our potentials for sustainable and just development are not always stolen away by the predatory elite that continue to dominate our political and economic systems.
There's one last and best thing I think that we can learn from Tita Cory. What she taught us with her life is simply this—if you love as best as you can, as best as your human frailty allows you—people will recognize that love and love you back. Of course it's not important that they love you back—that's not the point of loving or genuine service. But love does beget love and sometimes, with the best of us, our love is infectious and can set a nation aflame. And her love did, and we burned with good will for a while. It was such a wonderful thing to live through those times when we were a people of good will who thought we could infect the world with it.
We will miss you Tita Cory, especially now that we battle with such a dangerous evil in our government. We will miss your steadfast faith and hope for that was the light with which you led us.
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