What now, JdLC?

Flags of various shades, which just in recent past have clashed, and in many instances violently, were back. And for a long moment—all seven-and-a-half hours of a people’s procession—a long chilling moment that was both fleeting for a grateful nation to have seen, touched and been touched by her; and also remorseful for its many failures in overcoming various adversaries that have sent the country back to its present darkness, they have come together to join the people in mourning their loss of Cory Aquino, an icon who had been a rallying point in kicking out a dictatorship, who, even in her dying moment, struggled still to remind us of an unfinished business.
On Wednesday, when even the skies cried in gray sorrow as Cory was laid to rest beside her husband Ninoy, hero of our generation, these flags gave way, preferring instead to stay on the sides where the people were, shedding various claims of being vanguards of the protest movements, if not the revolution they have been trying to wage, and yes, even against Cory when she was still president of the republic. They joined the funeral to make up for their loss when they snubbed the first party in Edsa, where their presence would have turned it into a different revolution which it did not become, and so eventually they were eased out of their chance to become part of a government which they, in turn, despised and distrusted, but on which they clung their hopes on in not a few occasions when even their revolutionary wicks flickered.
For once, they were with the people they claimed to be trying to emancipate but whose major support they could not get. Men, women and children, the rich and the poor, the lumpens of the nation mixing with business and political leaders, those with PhDs who, in ordinary circumstances would not have walked the streets they traversed on foot on Wednesday, but never again in their lives perhaps, but were there to display a phenomenon we have seen only after nearly three decades, the last was for Ninoy himself, but just the same, was a clear signal of what is to come, if the present dispensation will continue on with its evil plans which Cory, herself, warned us against many times when she was living.
But even without flags, Cory’s last journey was like that of Biblical Moses, her remains parting an ocean of people, an account which for sure had sent many skin hair standing among the millions glued on their tellies, and a frightening chill down the spine of an illegal Malacanang occupant, who probably know by now but still refuses to acknowledge it, that on the day Cory had perished, the fire of protest among her people was again stoked—with or without the flags, with or without instigation, with Cory gone yet her spirit living, because there is an unseen revulsion in their hearts which they will express at any time they are challenged, or taunted.
In her death, Cory is still defending her “freedom constitution,” clutching it with both arms, her fingers twined with beads of her rosary, as if leaving it for God to defend, because in the last instances when many leaders called for bodies to show up, including Cory and Erap—two former presidents the present dispensation have many times called passé, only the flags showed up, not the people who came to Cory’s funeral, not those who still come in multitude in her Times St. home or the mausoleum she now shares with Ninoy, even days after her burial.
Even in her death, Cory had shown she can take people out of their homes and into the streets. If last week’s event does not send a warning to Gloria and her clique, who even just hours after the late president was laid to rest, have come out to insist on their Charter change plans, even claiming it as a test case once it is filed with the Supreme Court, to know whether Congress could go it alone, without the Senate, without the people and without conscience.
Even before Cory’s death, however, the people have already spoken against Cha-cha and against Gloria. They have preferred to lend their voices through new media, in various blogs, the Twitter, Facebook and yes, even Friendster, they have said no!
Gloria must have misread the people’s silence as either an impassive gesture or maybe lack of interest, or maybe even worse, silence that must have meant a show of support for her and her Cha-cha, oh Heaven forbid!
That was until last week, when everything changed, again.
And for it, let us thank Cory. Then let us move on and finish the business she had left behind, the same business we have ignored for a long time and let those various flags to solve.
Alone, they can’t. But together, we can!