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‘Ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever,’ then Pres. Corazon Aquino said in a speech she delivered before the joint session of the US Congress on September 18, 1986.

American legislators laughed at this remark, said so coyly by Aquino, who at the time has been in power for only seven months after People Power toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986.

The inexperienced politician predicated this statement, however, with the gravity of the Philippines’ responsibility of paying off its $2 billion foreign debt. She reiterated to the US Congress her decision to honor it—a stand sorely frowned upon by critics.

‘We fought for honor, and if only for honor, we shall pay,’ she said with a determination belied by her signature calm demeanor.

Aquino delivered this speech more than 20 years ago, but thanks to Youtube, the younger generation could hear and watch it over and over again – to review and disagree with her policies, or to laud her vow to uphold democracy at all costs.

A peek at Cory’s leadership

User NinoyAquinoTV uploaded the video of the speech last November 2008, five months after Aquino was diagnosed with colon cancer. A three-part series, it has generated collective hits of around 180,000 so far.

There are other videos in Youtube of Aquino taking her oath as the country’s new president in 1986, and bidding farewell to the presidency in her last State of the Nation Address delivered on July 22, 1991. One video showed a more than 70-year-old Cory giving an interview, years after she left Malacanang.

The videos allow the public to take a peek at her leadership will all its frailties and imperfections.

There was one report made by American television network CBS, which outlined Aquino’s fickle responses to the issues of communist insurgency and the fate of the US bases in the country.

She first said she would allow communists from the National Democratic Front and the New People’s Army to join her government if they take down their arms, but changed her mind after consulting her advisers. She initially also want the US bases, situated in Clark, Pampanga, to go, but later decided that they should stay upon again, the recommendation of her advisers.

In the end, the US bases left after the Senate voted against the renewal of the RP-US Military Bases Agreement. Aquino also declared a war against the communists after the collapse of the talks between the government and the NDF, although one of her first actions as a president was to grant amnesty to Communist Party chairman Jose Maria Sison and NPA leader Bernabe Buscayno.

Criticisms and praise

Vacillation may have marred Aquino’s leadership, a fact not lost on some Filipinos who have taken their sharp criticisms online. One user hit her for being ‘indecisive,’ and described her government as ‘run by the Catholic Church and wealthy elites.’

One of the sharpest reactions to the Associated Press report on her passing away on August 1, for example, described her as ‘trapo,’ or a traditional politician because, according to the Youtube user, she stayed until 1992 when she allegedly said she would only remain in power during the transition government, or until the new constitution has been set in place.

Still there are videos in Youtube which are all tributes to Aquino, whose death saw a nation in deep mourning.

Among the contributed videos were one entitled ‘Salamat, Tita Cory,’ and another entitled to ‘Cory Aquino: Democracy's icon in The Philippines.’ Some showed vignettes of her life during and after her presidency, with songs about heroism playing in the background. One played the piano to the composition ‘Gone,’ by Jim Chappell.

There are others still who recognized her shortcomings as a president, but thanked her for restoring democracy – the one thing which the Filipinos craved for the most, as Aquino herself learned while campaigning in 1986.

‘Not food, but democracy, not work, but democracy, not money for what little they had, they gave it to my campaign,’ she said in her speech before the US Congress.

Perhaps the highest praise accorded to Aquino by Youtube users was for her being the ‘unifying force’ that galvanized the nation in action against the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.

But Cory herself, as shown in the videos, credited the country’s return to democracy to nobody else, but the Filipino people.

‘Here, you have a people, who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it,’ she said in a speech delivered more than 20 years ago, but whose message would literally continue to remain fresh and alive in the vast online world.