Filipino Muslims feel deeper sense of loss with Cory’s demise

Her religiosity, anti-corruption symbol endear Cory to neglected communities

DAVAO CITY – The religiosity of the late President Corazon C. Aquino has endeared her most to Filipino Muslims, who said that this has clothe her with the moral ascendancy to lick corruption in the bureaucracy that no other nation’s leaders have done.

“It’s very painful. The Filipino Muslims in Mindanao are in great loss and grieving over her death,” said Alim Mahmoud Mala Adilao, president of the Ulama League of the Philippines (ULP) in Southern Mindanao.

He told BusinessMirror that “all my neighbours here [in Barangay Mini-Forest and blighted Isla Verde] and I know that the rest of the Muslim community in Mindanao are discussing Cory’s death, about how she became the only President to stop corruption because of her religiosity”.

“Our sense of loss is due to her ability to stop corruption, a problem with the bureaucracy that has prevented it for decades to help us, the Muslims and the Lumads [indigenous peoples]. No leader can do it unless they are deeply religious as Cory,” he said.

“And she was the only President who died poor, unlike those who have enriched and enriching themselves while in office,” he said. “We salute her because she was the only President who did not abuse her position, allowing her to join us, the poor and the ordinary people.”

In an open letter he drafted on behalf of the ULP and which he hoped would reached the family of the former President, Adilao said that “it was her religiosity which enabled her to manage the country morally and well”.

“If only all our leaders are guided by this God-fearing religiousity, we believe that this county would not be led astray,” the letter would say. “We hope that her prayerful life should be the guide of all leaders.”

“To her family, our condolence. We feel the deepest sense of loss and pain, and our prayers go them,” said the draft letter.

“A very compassionate President,” said Davao del Norte Gov. Rodolfo del Rosario, who recalled that he also became a congress representative by the time Mrs. Aquino became President.

He said that this allowed him to observe up close the late President in Malacanang. “She’s very accommodating and has a ready ear to our concern in my district.”

“It’s a sad story. It saddened me by that news,” he told BusinessMirror. He said he would always remember her as a “conciliatory President, uniting the Filipinos”.

At the Araw ng Kapalong town on Saturday, he said he urged the leaders of government and private sector and the residents “to offer a minute of prayer to Cory”.

Belo Caharian, a key personality in the Yellow Friday movement and in the current women’s movement against government corruption and the Palace’s push to amend the Constitution, said “we are saddened that we might loss a symbol against mismanagement of the country”.

“The pain of that loss is even more deepened with the demise of a leader who practices what she preaches, that even while battling her ailment, she still hanged on, always the great woman that we know especially in crisis”.

“But then, we believe that even in her death, she would not cease to be a symbol of an upright leader, and therefore we should celebrate her life that she left as her legacy,” she said.

She said that all her friends exclaimed “Oh my God” in their replies to the text message she sent informing them of the former President’s death.

“We are all saddened and shocked, because we know her that even when she became Citizen Cory, she never stopped working for the Filipino people,” Caharian said.

- 30 -