People bid Cory farewell

MANILA – About 200,000 people took to the rain-soaked streets of Manila yesterday to bid farewell to former president Corazon Aquino, whose "People Power" democracy movement ended decades of dictatorship.

Aquino, who died aged 76 after a long battle with cancer, was buried last night in a private ceremony after a long funeral procession skirting the Philippine capital's gleaming business towers and teeming shantytowns.

With a national holiday called as part of 10 days of official mourning, thousands of people surrounded her flag-draped coffin as it left Manila Cathedral following a mass just before noon.

As the moving funeral mass for Corazon Aquino ended at the Manila Cathedral yesterday morning, jeepney drivers in Bacolod City held their own send-off as a show of love for the former president

About 45 jeepneys with yellow ribbons, headlights on and horns blaring drove from Barangay Alijis to the Bacolod public plaza to honor her.

Negros Occidental Gov. Isidro Zayco yesterday said the tributes to Aquino and the sea of people who turned out on the streets despite the rain as her funeral cortege inched its way from the Manila Cathedral to the Manila Memorial Park for eight hours showed that Cory is truly loved by the Filipino people.

(Kilayko, a close friend of Cory Aquino, was at the Manila Cathedral and in the long procession to the Manila Memorial Park yesterday)

As it was in EDSA, so it was yesterday.

At the Manila Cathedral, nuns holding each other’s hands along the center aisle like honor guards of Cory Aquino's casket passing through then gave way at the threshold, to the men in uniform who gave their once commander-in-chief, due honors. At the Manila Memorial Park, once again we saw the beautiful harmony between the religious and military. As the seminarians prayed the rosary, the processional with Cory Aquino's military escort and band slowly entered the area close to where Cory was to finally lay at rest