A happy, nostalgic day with Cory Aquino

(Author’s note: This was my last interview with former President Cory Aquino, held on Feb. 24 this year and published the same month. It was a very happy day and she even wrote her own account of the EDSA Revolution exclusively for the STAR. After the interview, she gave photographer Joven Cagande a memento.

Last week, friends closest to Cory were given a chance to visit her at her hospital bed. When she was not in pain and she was awake she would acknowledge the visitor. They say she was not able to talk clearly, but tears would roll down her cheeks in appreciation whenever someone whispered something in her ear. The rosary given to her by Sister Lucia of Fatima was tightly wound on her right hand. As much as she could, friends said, Cory would pray the rosary with them, even in the silence of her heart.)

* * *

Cory Aquino is wearing a fuchsia pink suit as she meets me in her office on the 23rd anniversary of the first EDSA people power revolution. She has just undergone six hours of chemotherapy, and is wearing a portable chemo drip bag over one shoulder.

But the Cory Aquino who meets with me is in high spirits, energetic and at times, nostalgic. Despite her chemo treatments, she walks briskly around the 7th floor of the family-owned Cojuangco building in Makati, where she holds office.

The persistent cough that she had a year ago is gone. She has lost weight, and her hair is thinner. But otherwise, life seems very normal, I tell the former president.

“At a certain point, I think, Lord, I don’t want to complain, but there are times...” her voice trails off. Then she continues, “I have my good days of course, but I also do have my bad days. This last time had an episode of nosebleed, and the last time I had a nosebleed was when I was a teenager!”

What keeps her going through the bad days is not just her legendary courage — it’s her total surrender of her illness to God.

“Jesus Christ never committed any sin and had to suffer all the way until he died,” she rationalizes.

We are interrupted by the melody of Bayan Ko, the anthem of the EDSA 1 revolution. It is the ring tone of her phone. She gets a message from her doctor Dr. Romy Diaz and she nods.

“In the beginning, when my doctors first told me the news, they all looked so glum. I was prepared to go. I’ve lived a full life. I have been president.”

It’s been a year since the discovery of her cancer and there has definitely been progress in the shrinking of the tumor in Cory’s colon.

But the woman who has had to endure seven years of her husband’s incarceration, his assassination and subsequent attempts on her own life (in the 1989 coup attempt, rebel soldiers had gotten close enough to her house on Arlegui street) does not hide her pain.

“It’s there. I leave it up to God. It’s up to Him. But I’m not dying to live long. I never even expected to live this long. I am 76 years old and I was widowed at 50.”

She thinks of God’s purpose for her with the gift of every new day. “I wonder, what else is there for me to do, especially with helping the poor through microfinance. Ano pa ba ang kulang? What else should I do?”

Politics is the least of her concerns, and she has told her only son Sen. Noynoy Aquino that his choice for president in 2010 is up to him.

Privately, she tells me which of the presidential aspirants she thinks can be a good president, but she has not committed to support that person yet.

* * *

Since we are having our talk on the 23rd anniversary of EDSA, we talk about those perilous, exciting and heady days and the serious challenges that followed her assumption of the presidency.

She recalls she had no security except for those provided by relatives. So, she thought of someone whose professionalism was tested in crisis, then Col. Voltaire Gazmin, who was in charge of the camp in Laur, Nueva Ecija were Ninoy and Pepe Diokno were kept in solitary confinement. As a backgrounder, Cory did not even know where Ninoy was during those days — some said he was on an island somewhere. Some unscrupulous soldiers would tell her they saw him in this or that place and out of gratitude for the information, Cory would even give a generous tip to the soldiers.

One day, a soldier gave Ninoy’s sister Tessie Oreta another tip: Ninoy was with Voltz Gazmin.

“So Ninoy is in Laur!” Cory concluded, because she somehow knew that Gazmin was in charge of Laur. Finally, this was one tip that was genuine. Cory and her children motored to Nueva Ecija to see Ninoy for what Cory describes today as the “most traumatic experience of my life.”

Behind barbed wires, she saw her emaciated husband, who was sobbing when he finally saw his family. Cory was amazingly composed — her sister Terry had given her Valium before her trip to Laur.

* * *

Back to Gazmin. Apparently he had told prisoner Ninoy that he couldn’t set him free, but he would do his best to make his stay in the military prison as humane as possible. Ninoy took up Gazmin’s offer and asked him for a can of powdered Nido, because he did not want to eat the food being served by the soldiers, for fear that it was poisoned. And so Ninoy survived, thanks to Gazmin and to Nido.

After EDSA, someone handed an envelop to Cory with the card of Gazmin inside - just in case she needed his help. So she called him and entrusted her life to him just like Ninoy did a decade before.

Her first orders to him, she recalls, was to purge the ranks of the Presidential Security Group of the officers of the RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement).

It was just gut feel, according to Cory and Gazmin was surprised. Later on during the seven coup attempts against her, Gazmin would tell Cory that her instincts were right.

One of the best decisions she made, recalls Cory, was to tell then Armed Forces Chief Fidel Ramos in a heart-to-heart talk that she trusted him even if there were moves to discredit him. Ramos would reciprocate by defending the Constitution every time it was threatened during Cory’s presidency. In 1992, she endorsed him for president.

* * *

I ask Cory how she resisted temptations to be corrupt while she was in power?

“I guess it is inborn. Besides, I never wanted the presidency and I never desired to prolong my stay at Malacañang. I am a simple and conservative woman. When I was president, I repeated my clothes even in public functions. When I went on a state visit to the US, I wore simple suits because I was representing a Third World country. Maybe I like a good pair of shoes, but I will survive without them.”

Finally, she looks me in the eye and says, “Look, Ninoy died for our country, how could I steal from it?”

STAR photographer Joven Cagande arrives to take her photos. And, in what I think is the clearest manifestation that she is well, Cory tells me, “Can I put lipstick on first?”

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])