by Sheila S. Coronel
TWENTY YEARS ago, at the height of the people power revolt, Imelda Marcos, then holed up in Malacañang with her anxious family and a phalanx of remaining loyal troops, contemplated the possibility of her imminent, and vertiginous, fall. At about the same time, Cory Aquino, who had returned to Manila after taking shelter in a Carmelite convent in Cebu when the uprising broke out, was insisting to worried family and friends that she should join the throng that had gathered at Edsa despite the security problems that would pose.
‘Let us now look to tomorrow’
IT SOUNDS like a hiccup, but then Jose Concepcion Jr.’s voice breaks as he tells a story that he says he remembers as if it happened only yesterday. The story takes place on Edsa in 1986, at the height of the uprising that toppled President Ferdinand Marcos, and how Concepcion felt as he walked there with other council members of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), which he headed. A group had begun shouting “Namfrel!” and before the hefty Concepcion knew it, he was being lifted onto their shoulders.