A year ago the forces for democratic change in Asia were saddened by the death of one of the continent’s true heroines.

Corazon Aquino who in one brief, shining moment in her country’s long struggle for democratic restoration, resurrected the torch of Filipino freedom in 1986 that her late and fallen husband had held so courageously aloft, succumbed to a long battle with illness.
Those who live in the thrall of despotic regimes, particularly in Southeast Asia, and those newly freed from its clutches, remember with poignant gratitude the service this Philippine heroine rendered the cause of democracy to nation and continent.

The example of her struggle will find an indelible page in the history of peoples who struggle and thirst for freedom.

It is said it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest.
Had she been alive Cory Aquino would have been immensely proud to see the torch of democratic restoration passed this year to her son, Noynoy Aquino, who as the newly elected President of the Philippines is entrusted with the task of further vivifying the country’s imperishable Rizalean heritage.

The Philippines has not been a lucky nation, having long suffered from the capricious lash of nature.

But the country has been endowed with fortuity in that leaders has arisen at critical junctures in its history to revive and vivify the precious legacy of freedom the country’s progenitor, Jose Rizal, gifted both nation and continent.

In the historical delineation of that legacy, Corazon Aquino will ever command a luminous chapter.

Her passing a year ago today is a poignant remembrance to the forces of democratic restoration in Malaysia to whom she rendered invaluable moral support.

Anwar Ibrahim
Opposition Leader
Parliament, Malaysia