CORY IS THE ANSWER

UP in Baguio last weekend and on stage with the mightiest of the armed forces of the land and fronting the crack cadet corps of the Philippine Military Academy, Cory Aquino was a transformation to behold, from helpless, weary widow to head of state and Commander in-Chief of the AFP. Talk of miracles, this one beats the latest in a series we’ve had this past month.

The fingers of her right hand (but nails still un-manicured) — extended and joined, thumb not showing, elbow at right angle — did not quite meet the tip of her eyebrow where they should have, but a notch higher, — on her forehead, to execute her maiden salute to her soldiers. But what the heck? Only a month ago during her inauguration, Chief of Staff General Fidel Ramos saluted her and she tried to salute back but only managed what seemed like a cross between a limp wave of the hand and a scratching of the head.

And now there she was saluting almost 200 times in one morning. But even with her forehead salute, she was so right where she was, fiercely protective and proud of her soldiers but, herself looking like she needed to be protected.

The aforementioned eyebrows now nicely set off a radiant face when not too long ago, they arched like birds in frightful flight.

Like concerned sisters, we tried to catch up with her before the campaign to tell her to do something about her eyebrows. She might come across looking harsh. Please, Cory. It just isn’t you. We sent messages. But she was on a non-stop schedule during the campaign, then came the election, the massive frauds that had to be checked into and denounced, then the boycott, the Revolt of the People, her inauguration as the seventh president of the Republic and the flight of the Marcoses. And she dared go through all these upheavals, with the unsuitable eyebrows. But they’re all right now. Even her figure is better. She also needed to lose weight. But the campaign took care of that. She slimmed down by 15 pounds.

Even her speaking voice has changed — from the flat, mother-wants-to-tell-you something tone to I’m-in-charge confidence’ and authority. This she does without raising her voice. She does not need to. With millions of people cheering her on, how can she be ignored and brushed aside as only a woman?

Someone — and there may have been others — among the very Cory crowd was observed to be crying on such a glorious summer’s day. We suspect she (a woman, of course) was overwhelmed at the reality of Cory as embodiment of personal and historic change, the personal playing catch up with the historic. Or was it the other way around? Had we been there, we may have wept, too, for lack of any other way of expressing our thrill at seeing another woman succeeding so well at being a woman in the male-dominated public scene without, however, acting like a man, without shedding what we think of as woman’s compassion and amazing grace.

The performance of Cory Aquino as first woman president of this country “gracing” the PMA graduation rites was in no way a celebration of the triumph of women’s liberation and feminism. What has been said of Geraldine Ferraro when she ran for the office of the vice-president in the U.S. in the last elections is also true of Cory: “… While women are turned on by her candidacy, she does not turn off men. She is not polarizing.” Cory has synthesized within herself “male opportunity and female sensibility”.

To be fair to the men present, there was never an awkward moment when the President as female was made an issue or a problem. Cory in the yellow suit in the bright Baguio sun seemed in fact to be the answer. — LJM