Rene Saguisag honors Cory in this article
This is the season for remembering, especially for everyone who had come of age by 1983, and so took part in one way or another in the events of the times. “Veterans” of the parliament of the street and the Yellow Army especially have been drawn back to those years, igniting memories which will never fade perhaps, no matter how much time has passed, and made sharper as the nation bids “Tita Cory” farewell today.
Among those with “bragging rights” to reminisce on the Cory years and recall the times they spent with the former president, Rene Saguisag deserves a special place. A human rights lawyer at a time when the title meant risking arrest and persecution, Saguisag played a vital role in the post-Ninoy assassination protest movement, eventually being named spokesman for Ms Aquino when she finally agreed to run for president.
Political differences may have put Saguisag and Ms Aquino in different camps after her term ended, but clearly the friendship remained strong, especially after Saguisag and his wife Dulce figured in a vehicular accident that killed Dulce and left Rene in frail health.
Just recently, he remembers, a TV crew came to interview him about Cory and took shots of a gift she had given him, a painting she made herself. For the first time, Saguisag said, “I saw on the back (of the painting) a note thanking me ‘for being my spokesman, my lawyer, my speech-writer, my loyal supporter and most of all for being my friend! God bless!”’
“She would write nice notes,” he noted.
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IN DECEMBER 2007, Cory stood as ninang (godmother) in the wedding of Saguisag’s son Rebo and his bride Jackie. January last year, before her family told the public about her illness, Cory paid a visit to Saguisag to console him on the loss of Dulce, and some time after, called him again to thank him for “something I had said.” Already battling cancer, Ms Aquino even managed to send gifts to Rebo and Jackie’s first child, along with another nice note to the couple.
“I was her spokesperson in the 1985-1986 snap election campaign, a role she asked me to continue discharging when we took power, to my shock,” Saguisag remembers. “When I made kendeng (swayed, meaning he dithered about accepting the appointment), that late afternoon of Feb. 25, 1986, when we had two presidents, she said to an equally surprised Joker and me (both of us looking down at our shoes a long, long time): ‘Kasama kayo sa mga nagpatakbo sa akin, ngayon ayaw ninyo akong tulungan (You were among those who urged me to run now you don’t want to help me).’ So we got aboard, and discharged the campaign promise to release all political detainees, to the chagrin of Manong Johnny and RAM… President Cory could not start by going back on a solemn commitment.”
And now, Saguisag declares: “My boss, icon and friend is gone, to join Dulce and make tsismis. More seriously, to pray for us in this valley of tears.”
more on this in Inquirer http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090805-218788/Rene-remembers-Cory
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