The last act

From the balcony overlooking the reception hall of Malacañang’s Premier Guest House, former newscaster Ricky Carandang, now a public servant, once asked President Noynoy Aquino, “Why aren’t you stressed? I am so stressed!”

P-Noy thinks his calm under fire is due to having observed his mother deal with all the challenges, including unrelenting media criticism, as she led the country in the difficult transition from dictatorship to democracy.

He also takes comfort in the thought, P-Noy jokes, that “Blessed are the persecuted… siguro may grasya akong mapapala rito (perhaps I can reap some grace from this).”

P-Noy shared some of his memories of his mother yesterday afternoon with former Cabinet members and close aides of Corazon Aquino, at the Palace Guest House that served as her office during her presidency, and which he is now using for the same purpose.

Sonny Coloma, head of the Presidential Communications Operations Office, gathered the group together and asked them to share their memories of Cory Aquino, in a speech that must not be longer than two minutes – with a 30-second extension at most.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said it would be impossible to condense in two minutes his experiences during his six years, four months and seven coup attempts – “the longest season of coups” – as commander of the post-Marcos Presidential Security Group (PSG). Gazmin taught the country’s first female commander-in-chief how to march and salute, and he recalled that “she was a quick learner.”

Many of the tributes on the occasion of President Cory’s 78^th birthday have been heard before. But Gazmin – and the rest of the other “Cory Vets” as Coloma called them – managed to relate some little known details about the Cory years, including moments of being tipsy.

President Cory was “a very caring” leader who stood as godmother at the sunset weddings of about 50 PSG members during her six years in power, Gazmin recalled. She personally footed the expenses for all the weddings.

She had one instruction to Gazmin about parties held at the PSG camp at Malacañang Park: “Make sure the female guests are PSG ladies.”

Aware of her concern for marital fidelity, her Cabinet members sometimes teased President Cory. Her former appointments secretary Margarita Juico, now head of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, recalled that President Cory once asked some of her aides who among the Cabinet members were 100 percent faithful to their spouses. The answer: only Jose Concepcion Jr., at the time the trade secretary, and finance chief Vicente Jayme.

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Beyond the jokes, many of the “Vets” recalled the coup plots, and the steel behind the soft veneer that allowed the “plain housewife” to survive seven coup attempts.

Former environment chief Fulgencio Factoran Jr. related that it was during a meeting at the Guest House that President Cory decided to fire Juan Ponce Enrile as defense secretary in the wake of the November 1986 coup plot code-named God Save the Queen.

It was also at the Guest House, Transport Secretary Ping de Jesus said, where Palace aides had gathered during the December 1989 coup together with then US ambassador Nicholas Platt. Ping, at the time the secretary of public works, recalled one of the Cabinet members suggesting that the President should leave Manila. Her response: “I will remain here. If I have to die, I will die here.”

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jose Angel Honrado, now general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority, headed the PSG’s close-in security detail during those days. He recalled that he received the worst dressing down from President Cory when she learned that he had initially withheld from her the news that her only son had been shot and wounded near St. Jude Church as the August 1987 coup attempt got underway before dawn.

“How dare you do this to me. I am not only the president, I am also the mother of my children,” Honrado recalled her scolding him. Much later, she instructed him: “Tell me the truth, tell me everything, then let me decide.”

Yesterday P-Noy disclosed that it was his idea to keep his mother from knowing that he had been shot. He talked to her by phone from the PSG hospital when she looked for him at the start of the coup.

An overriding theme in the Cory Vets’ recollections was their pride in having served in her government.

Cayetano Paderanga Jr., then as now the socio-economic planning secretary, summed up that pride: “I do not have to apologize for anything that we did under her.”

There were no midnight appointees or midnight deals, recalled Sen. Franklin Drilon, the executive secretary during President Cory’s final year in power. “The hallmark of her governance was adherence to the rule of law.”

Today at the Senate, Drilon said, he is the only one left who is considered “bata ni Cory” (Cory’s boy), and he is proud of the label.

He is especially impressed that she resisted all suggestions to run for president in 1992 because the term limit set by the 1987 Constitution did not cover her.

With a firm belief that no one should cling to power, she instead sent Aniceto Sobrepeña abroad to study the mechanics of transferring power peacefully – something that had not been done in the country since 1965.

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P-Noy said he learned lessons as he observed his mother “chart unknown territory” in governance.

She assumed office with a lot of problems and without a blueprint, he recalled, and “she did it.” He thinks about this when he comes under fire.

“Buti na lang konti na lang ang buhok ko kasi pati paghati ko ng buhok binabatikos na ngayon (It’s a good thing my hair is thinning because even the way I part my hair is criticized these days),” he sighed.

He misses his mother’s cooking, he told us, particularly the spaghetti with Swedish meatballs and the sukiyaki. When he visits the Times Street family home where he stayed with her until her death, he still avoids the kitchen and her bedroom.

“We really planted the seeds” of change whose fruits are now being harvested, he said, then added hastily, “Nakiki-‘we’ na ako maski saling-pusa lang ako noon.”

Recalling the twists of fate that brought him to power, starting with his father Ninoy, the second President Aquino said, “I like to look at this as perhaps the last act of this particular play.”