THE military on Saturday rendered its highest honors, in a fitting final salute, to the former commander-in-chief, Benigno Simeon Aquino III as he was laid to rest beside his parents after succumbing to end-stage kidney disease three days earlier.
Military men held the flag and his ashes in an urn close to their hearts as they marched to his graveside. Barely an hour earlier, Noynoy’s eldest sister Ballsy Aquino-Cruz, in thanking the people at the requiem mass at Ateneo’s Church of the Gesu, recalled how Noynoy, the only son and namesake of the late senator Ninoy Aquino, was called by his father to his top-security detention in Laur’s military camp in 1973. Ninoy, one of the first to be jailed under martial law, told Noynoy, then 13, he had to be brave and ready to take care of his mother and four sisters.
The former senator would die in military custody as he was arrested when he returned from exile in 1981. His widow Corazon would become President on the wave of people power protests against the Marcos dictatorship in 1986; but her term would be rocked by a succession of coups by disgruntled soldiers–including one where rebel soldiers shot at Noynoy’s entourage as he returned to Malacanang, killing two escorts and leaving a bullet in the neck of the then-President’s son.
Ballsy fought back tears at the Gesu chapel as she recalled how Noynoy seemed to have been forced by fate to step up each time tragedy met the political clan.
Later at the Manila Memorial Park. Ballsy would receive the folded Philippine flag from Armed Forces chief of staff Cirilito Sobejana, who conveyed the Republic’s gratitude to the family for the services rendered by the late President.
Three political figures — a martyred senator, a widow-president who fought back coup attempts, and a dutiful son — with fates intertwined with the military. In the end, the men in uniform rendered them all a final salute.