PURSUING THE VISION OF PRESIDENT CORAZON "CORY" COJUANGCO AQUINO

As a public service organization whose mission is to gather and convey the sentiments of our people on urgent national concerns, we in Pulse Asia – much like the rest of the nation -- are extremely saddened by the demise of President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino.

As politically non-partisan, social science practitioners, we have academically probed numerous issues besetting our much-troubled land. The people’s eroding quality of life, their persistent poverty, problematic governance, fractious elections, widespread corruption, the numerous, often self-serving attempts to change the Constitution and the citizenry’s fragile sense of the legitimacy of an oft- battered political order – these issues are only a few of the urgent concerns we in Pulse Asia have probed in the past decade. 

In all Pulse Asia readings of events, institutions, and personalities, a remarkable public sense has emerged. For Filipinos generally speaking, someone has consistently stood out as a model of probity across the years, someone unsullied even in the clearly transactional setting of Philippine society and politics, a person whose most recent experience -- coping with the excruciating pain that a dreaded affliction brings -- showed even more the strength of her character, her unwavering faith in the goodness of our Creator, and her intense desire to help Filipinos free themselves from the gross suffering they have had to endure across the decades. This singular entity, this person is President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino.

To us in Pulse Asia, President Aquino, deserves to be remembered not only as a remarkably courageous foil to tyrants who spawn and thrive in a culture of impunity. Not even simply as a former president who tried to lay the foundations of democratic governance in a country long alienated from this humanist political tradition. Even as she willfully resisted the temptations of extended political preeminence in 1992, even as she transparently, legally and peacefully yielded the mandate and responsibility of steering the nation when her term of office ended, she continued, in her distinctly modest but most effective way, to be an advocate of democratic deepening in the nation’s most trying and tortuous times. President Cory knew -- from the time that she led a fractious opposition to Marcos’ martial rule, through her term as a post-EDSA president, and in the years after when she took on what she called her “citizen” days -- that inaction has its own grave perils, that her silence as a “retired” leader in the face of wanton abuse of power constitutes assent to predatory governance, that in the end, a conscientious leader withdrawing from the national scene would push her people deeper into greater political disempowerment, heightened cynicism and a possibly irreversible sense of disabling hopelessness. This she was not willing to consider and therefore, after her presidency, she continued to work for whatever she believed would serve her nation best. 

There is no contemporary leader, in this country or elsewhere in the world, who can surpass the firmness of President Cory’s commitment to democracy. Even stronger appears to be her faith in the power of the God of history, the wellspring of her strength and love and compassion for her own people. We in Pulse Asia have been much privileged to witness this exemplary leader’s unwavering commitment to the loftiest of humanist and democratic ideals. Numerous were the times when we in Pulse Asia directly benefited from her words of encouragement in our own uncompromising attempt to give our people an audible voice in this nation’s governance. President Cory was ever supportive in our democratic quest, even on the occasions when Pulse Asia survey results may have not been that supportive of our shared personal and institutional advocacies. 

We join the nation in grieving the death of President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino. While we know that death is inevitable, we are nevertheless deeply saddened by the passing away of this particularly rare leader, one who has fully lived up to her name in opening a truly magnanimous heart and sharing it with the Filipino people. Her memory will continue to inspire our work in Pulse Asia and that work, we trust, will contribute to realizing her final vision of a truly democratic and humanist Philippine society.

Felipe B. Miranda                                                                     Ronald D. Holmes

Chair, Board of Trustees                                                           President

Ana Maria L. Tabunda

Chief Research Fellow

Pulse Asia Fellows:

Dr. Emmanuel E. De Dios

Dr. Cynthia B. Bautista

Mrs. Mercy R. Abad

Pia Raquedan

Dr. Patricio Abinales

Mr. Enrico C. Osi

Pulse Asia Staff:

Analiza S. Reyes

Joseph A. Carlom

Shiela Marie A. Billones

Dennis R. Caasi

Mary Grace G. Sualog

Jeffrey S. de la Fuente

Suncill V. Samson

Maricel P. Modesto

Jose Roderick G. Enriquez