Tita Cory

From http://inquirer.net/

“Tita” (Auntie) Cory, as former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino was fondly called, drew her last breath yesterday, August 1, 2009, at 3:18 A.M., after a brief but brave fight against the big C. She was 76. The news of her death even upstaged the news about the recent meeting between our President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and US President Barrack Obama.

She was not only our first woman president in the Philippines (serving from February 1983 to June 1992) but also Asia’s. She was Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year in 1986. She “will be remembered as an icon of democracy, having led a military-backed popular revolt in 1986 that ousted a dictator who ruled the country for 20 years.” (http://inquirer.net/)


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cory_Aquino_-_Woman_of_the_Year.jpg

Before her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino, was assassinated in 1983, he said that he pities the person who would succeed then President Ferdinand Marcos. Little did he know that his wife would be that successor. Other than the political challenges she faced as president, such as the massive national debt she inherited from Marcos and a corrupt bureaucracy, Cory also braved seven coup attempts, an earthquake in 1990 and a volcanic eruption in 1991. She made sure that there would be a peaceful transition of power when her term ended. She refused to heed calls to run for reelection even if she was not legally covered by the term limits imposed in the 1987 Constitution which her administration drafted and the people ratified. “In August 1999, Aquino was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 20 Most Influential Asians of the 20th century. The same magazine cited her in November 2006 as one of 65 great Asian Heroes, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping, Aung San Suu Kyi, Lee Kuan Yew, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej.” (http://wikipedia.org/) Her greatest legacy would be restoring democracy through a bloodless revolution, which among other things have influenced the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany in 1989. Someone eulogized, “She made the Filipinos proud to be Filipinos.” What a feat for a plain housewife in a yellow dress! She reminds me of 1 Corinthians 1:27-28: “But God chose the foolish things of this world to put the wise to shame. He chose the weak things of this world to put the powerful to shame. What the world thinks is worthless, useless, and nothing at all is what God has used to destroy what the world considers important.” (CEV)

Brethren, God can and will work in and through the ordinary you.

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