Cory Aquino as a boss

I visited Malacañang recently for the traditional vin d’honneur and the National Prayer meeting that President Noynoy Aquino led in the Palace grounds. It is always a sentimental journey when I visit Malacañang these days, even if only briefly on social occasions, because it was once my second home for 6 1/2 years.

From the Cory Media Bureau of the Snap Presidential Campaign, I was recruited to work in the Press Office of President Cory Aquino where I served with pride from Day One in 1986.

It was to me a shining moment — being part of the reel of history as it unfolded, not as a spectator but as a participant, in the first seven years of the country’s return to democracy after 20 years under a dictatorship.

And the best part of being part of history was working for a President who had changed its course.

I remember when President Cory would go to the lairs of rebels in the name of peace — to the Cordilleras to meet rebel priest Conrado Balweg, and to Mindanao to meet with Nur Misuari. I joined the trip to Balweg territory in a helicopter gunship with soldiers holding on to their guns while I serenely watched the breathtaking scenery below. I remember how she flew to Baguio right after the bombing of the PMA, or to Nueva Ecija right after the earthquake to personally check on the rescue and retrieval operations, even as a teacher was still pinned in between two floors of the rubble. Cory was fearless.

It was thus no surprise that even when she was sending her trusted aides home to safety in the height of the 1987 coup attempt, when rebel forces were closing in on her Arlegui residence, she refused to budge. She was going to die with her boots — her pumps, if you will — on. And her hair in place.

In his recollection of one particular tense moment during the standoff, then Presidential Security Group commander Col. Voltaire Gazmin (now Defense Secretary) recalls in the book “Cory: An Intimate Portrait” (edited by Margie Penson-Juico), “I then made a headcount and found one missing. I went back upstairs and noticed light coming through the open bathroom door. It was the President combing her hair.”

“Ma’am,” Gazmin begged, “please go to the ground floor, it’s not safe here.” To which Cory calmly replied that she needed to look presidential and presentable when she met the media if she survived the rebel attack.

“She was the calmest soul around,” recalled Gazmin.

Brave as President Cory was, Maria Montelibano, head of her Presidential Broadcast Staff, in her essay for Margie’s book, Cory: An Intimate Portrait, writes: “The public seldom saw you weep… But I saw you weep privately when you had to let go of your good friends and allies from governing with you, their ways having proved to you vital in times of chaos, but a hindrance to restoring order.”

I also saw President Cory weep when she eulogized her friend Betty Go-Belmonte almost 20 years ago.

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President Cory was usually formal with me when I was her close-in writer. But once, after her audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican during her state visit in 1988, she suddenly asked me if I had gotten my photo with the Pope, which the Vatican photographer had shown her. I remember she even allowed me inside her private quarters until the photo was traced. Even if I was just a member of her staff, she was considerate enough to know that that photo was going to be treasured by me, and she wanted to make sure I had it.

“She always found time to acknowledge the work we were doing for her and the country,” says Mons Romulo, who was then working as a documentation officer at the Presidential Broadcast Staff.

President Cory wasn’t always chummy with the Malacañang Press Corps, or accessible to them at all times. But she knew how to show her appreciation for them. Sometimes, she would send her home-cooked paté to the press working area. When Kata Inocencio of ABS-CBN and Marichu Villanueva were expecting babies, she threw them a baby shower in then Press Undersecretary Deedee Siytangco’s office. On one of her last weeks in office, she invited the Malacañang Press Corps and their families to a swimming party at the Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.

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According to Deedee in her essay for Margie’s book, President Cory didn’t want any of the top columnists of the day at the time to feel “pa-close” to her, so to speak.

Writes Deedee in the book, “While most of them were like schoolboys in awe of her, one or two were showoffs, impertinently reminding her once in a while how she used to make coffee for them when they were shooting the breeze with her husband Ninoy, in their home.”

“I saw her stiffen when one columnist called her ‘Cory’ in some condescending context. Her eyebrows raised, she stared him down and ignored him throughout lunch. His own fellows scolded him for being such a ‘rude guest’,” recalls Deedee. Now if you want to know who that fellow is, you’ll have to ask Deedee because she never told me.

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Deedee also writes that President Cory often reminded her official family that she was a “mere guest of the Filipinos to serve them as President and for anyone, that is enough.”

“That would shut up any of us who might be entertaining thoughts of a second term for her,” Deedee added. 

That’s why, President Cory, in a rare display of informality with the press, sang “I’ll never run again” to the tune of I’ll never love again during one Palace gathering. By this time, she had become comfortable, even friendly, with the press, she could even sing for them. Methinks by this time she was just sick and tired of being asked if she was going to run for office, as she was not elected under the 1987 Constitution that prohibited a second term for a sitting President. So she sang her statement loud and clear.

On my part, I remember how President Cory was such a careful steward of government funds. I was told that when her grandson Jiggy wanted to get candy from a bowl in the Palace, he would ask first, “Sa atin ba ito o sa gobyerno?”

I also remember that for private parties, like the screening of Kris’ movie Pido Dida at the Premier Guesthouse, President Cory had food prepared by the family cook at Arlegui and brought to the Guesthouse. Same thing when she was entertaining priests and seminarians who sang at Ninoy’s death anniversaries. I also was informed that when she travelled on Philippine Airlines to a state visit, she would pay for the fare of any of her children accompanying her.

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I still feel a surge of pride whenever I remember how President Cory once asked me, when we were in a function in the Alabang area in May 2004, if she could “be invited” to my home in nearby Parañaque. I was floored. I was honored beyond words. Then I panicked. Was the house spic and span? What will I serve the former President? (Mango ice cream would be okay, said Margie Juico.) Then I rushed home from Alabang and told all the guards inside BF that former President Cory Aquino was going to visit, her van had no sticker, but could they please just let her in?

After about 20 minutes, lo and behold! The Icon of Democracy was in my townhouse. That was perhaps the most delicious mango ice cream my husband and I ever had, for we shared it with an honored guest!

On Saturday, President Cory, as you celebrate your 81st birthday in heaven, I will have mango ice cream in my home, and remember how lucky I was and still am to have had you visit the heart of my world.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)