Bro. Eddie on Cory and Ninoy: Let Their Light Continue to Shine

August 6, 2009

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By Bro. Eddie Villanueva

The mammoth crowd that brought former President Cory Aquino to her final resting place Wednesday was “an indelible sign of a changing of season.”

So said Bro. Eddie Villanueva as he lauded those who braved the rains and the heat to show last respects to the former President, one of the country’s greatest pillars of democracy.

“For so many years now we Filipinos have tried to contradict the disappointingly low regard of many foreigners on us. We have been called the most corrupt and hungry nation in Asia, a nation of maids, etc. But what the nation has tried to overcome through the efforts of the living was initially achieved over night ironically by the death of a widow,” Villanueva, leader of good governance group Bagong Pilipinas, Bagong Pilipino Movement said in a statement.

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos joined the Aquino children in the funeral procession from the Manila Cathedral to the Manila Memorial Park that lasted almost eight hours.

Apart from those who were on the streets, hundreds of thousands were also glued to television coverage and listened to radio reports as the nation bid President Cory farewell. Online interaction on tributes to the former President also reached phenomenal hits.

“President Cory has opened a better door for the Filipino to enter — a door that showed the best the Filipino spirit can muster. Where the current national leaders have failed to inspire the Filipino, she by her death indelibly showed to the country and to the world the kind of character Filipinos are really made of,” he added.

Villanueva called on nation-loving Filipinos to take on the legacy of President Cory and her husband, former Sen. Ninoy Aquino.

“Democracy can be stolen from us. But if we fight for it and do our share to protect it, like the examples shown to us by President Cory and her husband Ninoy, democracy will also empower all of us so that we will live a dignified life as a nation,” he said.

Villanueva said Filipinos should not bury the legacy of the Aquino couple with them, but to continue protecting the democracy of the Philippines.

“Though we mourn as a nation the loss of a President who epitomizes all that the people hope for, the answer to the challenge is within each one of us. By continuing the fight that President Cory and Senator Ninoy have started, we will let their light shine on,” he said.