About two weeks before former President Corazon Aquino’s death, when her friends and allies started holding healing Mass for her, another journalist wondered, “If peace really awaits Cory in the afterlife, why wouldn’t they let her go?”
I didn’t say, it’s because they love her and it’s instinctive for people to pray for somebody they love. It would have encouraged my colleague to start an argument.
So I told him what I really thought: “Because they have political fortunes and careers to protect.”
“Many of them,” I said, “are nothings and accidents of history who acquired some quote-unquote value because of their association with Cory and Ninoy. Now, without a Cory to ride on, they are afraid they won’t get any farther.”
Without a Cory whom people believe to be incorruptible, her Kamag-anak Inc. wouldn’t have a buffer for their economic interests.
Without a Cory whom people consider credible, her political allies and civil society clique wouldn’t be able to sustain their projection of moral ascendancy over whoever they fancied to bring down.
If you want to stretch it further: Were it not for Cory, Noynoy would’ve been just another inarticulate bachelor; Kris would’ve been just another tactless unwed mother. Not a senator; not a well-paid TV host.
“Now,” my colleague said, “it makes sense.”
DELUSIONS
Of course it makes sense.
It makes sense for them to try to squeeze Cory dry for whatever’s left of her political capital. Even in her death.
Wear yellow ribbons, her partisans urged the public.
When the response was less than enthusiastic, they started distributing these for free. In the last few days, if your car got caught in traffic around Makati, strangers would pop up beside your window and hand you giveaway ribbons, urging you to tie them around your car antenna or side mirror. I mean, why shove yellow ribbons toward people who weren’t looking for them? Who’s paying?
This is so like 1983 and 1986, it’s giving us goose bumps, they said in interviews.
I say they deserve to get boils all over their body for trying to fool themselves and us. If they were really around when Filipinos stirred from their silent rebellion when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and if they were really involved when people heeded the call of Cardinal Vidal (he was the first to make the call, not Cardinal Sin) for them to protect the soldiers who had defected from Ferdinand Marcos, then they would know that Cory’s wake and funeral were far from being reminiscent of 1983 and 1986.
When Ninoy was buried in 1983, two million joined the cortege. When Cory was brought to the memorial park today, a combined 150,000 were reported to have either marched or watched on the side streets. What law in mathematics states that 7.5% is the same as 100%?
When people went to Edsa and stayed there for four days to force the dictator to leave Malacañang in 1986, their number was estimated to have peaked at four million. I didn’t know that 4,000,000 and 150,000 had the same number of zeroes?
So why the delusion?
Maybe it’s their consuming desire to have President Arroyo ousted, or their desperation to preserve their perceived powerbroker status for the 2010 elections.
So at the slightest sign of people lining up to pay their last respects for President Cory, they got excited. If the crowds swelled up, maybe all this could serve as a dry run for any attempt to unseat, or at least unsettle, Gloria. If remembrances from Cory (and Ninoy)—yellow ribbons, Laban sign, confetti, “Bayan Ko”—would acquire a new appeal, maybe this can be sustained until the next presidential elections. (Tarpaulins, posters, and TV ads of politicians against a Cory backdrop are flashing in front of me!)
MEDIA TRIES MAGIC
Shamefully, the media was very much a party to this misrepresentation. They started with reports that yellow ribbons were lining the streets of Metro Manila as a show of support for President Aquino who was confined at the Makati Medical Center. “Metro Manila” turned out to be a major street each in just two cities. Even then, I didn’t see them “lining” those pathetic streets.
At Cory’s wake and funeral, TV reporters kept on saying “punong puno ng tao” (jam-packed) and “like 1983, like Edsa 1,” as if reading from a teleprompter or cue cards sent down by network executives. It was almost mechanical.
And every time they said “punong puno” or “dumadagsa ang mga tao” (people are flocking or flooding), the footages taken by their own cameras showed otherwise. (Newsbreak has a detailed article on exaggerated reports on the crowd size.)
A much younger colleague gave me a bewildered look after one reporter said the Manila Cathedral was “punong puno” with sympathizers who wanted a last glimpse of Cory last Monday, as the camera showed a chapel with rows of seats still waiting to be occupied. The media had redefined “punong puno” and “dagsa.”
It seemed to me that the media got bored with covering prospective “people power” revolts that went pffft in recent years that they took it upon themselves to make this one event an exciting coverage.
“Cory magic is back,” bannered the Inquirer print edition Tuesday. What Cory magic? Their online story the night before that said there were 120,000 mourners who either marched on the streets or watched on the sidelines as Cory’s remains were transferred from La Salle Greenhills to the Manila Cathedral.
ABS-CBN Online was worse (apologies to friends I respect and love who are working there). At the rate they were posting a Cory story in every section, you’d think the world stopped for ABS when she died. Cory embraced Muslim faith, Cory had a special relationship with Joma, NDF has a lot to thank Cory for, Manny Pangilinan was touched by Cory’s humility, An orchid has been named after Cory, Willie Revillame honors Cory, Ai-ai de las Alas remembers Cory, Manny Pacquiao says Cory is like Mommy Dionesia, Zsa Zsa Padilla breaks down during Cory rehearsal, Charice fails to see Cory, and yes, of course, Star Magic mourns Cory’s death.
ABS-CBN, the network, was most zealous, actually. (They started the “punong puno” thing, for one.) Aside from the fact that they were assigned by the Aquino family to coordinate the broadcast pool for the wake and the funeral (read: international networks would have to buy videos from them), we very well know that the Lopezes who own the network owe Cory a lot.
Cory, when she became president, helped the Lopezes get ABS-CBN and Meralco back. From what you’d hear in business circles, however, it seems Cory returned to the Lopezes more than what Marcos got from them, on a silver platter. So when, in a company-wide tribute to Cory, Gabby Lopez talked about how grateful they were to Cory for helping them get their businesses back, it gave goose bumps to some. (Why does Cory’s death give us goose bumps in strange ways?)
In fact, during the funeral, I thought I saw ABS pull out live footages of spots where the crowd was not impressive, and instead replayed shots of bigger congregations. (Shades of Namfrel quick count circa 2004, releasing in succession only the figures from areas where President Arroyo was ahead and sparingly from FPJ bailiwicks, to create the impression that Arroyo was winning.)
And did the anchors and reporters really have to wear yellow and black? And Cory button pins? All of them?
I had to blink several times to wake up from this journalistic nightmare titled “Daily Express Resurrected.”
But back to the numbers.
In February this year, a survey by the Social Weather Stations showed that 55% of respondents in Metro Manila had “much trust” for Cory. Fifty-five percent of the capital region’s population is 6.35 million.
If we’d insist that 120,000 (on Monday) or 150,000 (Wednesday) sympathizers “braving the rains” (another favorite phrase of reporters covering the Cory funeral) is overwhelming, then I think it means Cory’s 6.35-million-karat magic has tragically faded.
And we may have seen the last of those yellow ribbons.
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