FOLLOWING the death of former President Benigno S. Aquino III last June 24, certain segments of social media were filled with anything and everything you can read about PNoy, his mom, his dad, and the legacy he and his family have carved out in Philippine history books.
There were comments reminiscent of what has been said about the Kennedys — few families have sacrificed as much for our democracy; there were glimpses of what PNoy was like as a friend and/or a boss; and there were countless evaluations of his six years in office, sometimes with intentional contrasts to the nearly six years of the incumbent.
Of course, if your algorithms allowed you a broader selection of entries into your feed then you’d have read the equally virulent detractors, or heard even how a member of the Bar and an officer of the court so casually implied that the former President suffered from an affliction which, for all we know, that same lawyer is sick of himself.
‘Who will it be this time?’
To his credit, Thinking Pinoy had a self-imposed ceasefire for a day, which to me was good enough coming from a critic. Of course, the next day he has a post about the 44 SAF who died while in pursuit of the finger of a most wanted terrorist.
As it was in 1983 and then again in 2009, the death of an Aquino opened the floodgates to strong emotions.
As it was with those two previous occasions so it is with this one — the question arises: who will inherit the unenviable responsibility of carrying on the fight? In 1983 and in 2009 the Aquinos and their allies were confronted with reluctant “heirs.” In the first instance, it was the widow, who however had always been on the sidelines when it came to the politics of her husband. And so it took some time — almost three years — before she finally embraced the Fate that had been thrust upon her and led the fight to overturn the existing order.
Twenty-three years later, it was the son and namesake’s turn to reluctantly embrace the same role.
PNoy died just as we are all gearing up for another presidential campaign and the timing of his death and the resultant flooding of emotions — old ones rekindled and new ones stoked — could not make me ask myself that one single question that is surely on the minds of many, many others:
Who will it be this time?
