The BSP Numismatic and Concept Committee said Mrs. Aquino is already qualified to have her image put in a bill or coin. (Read: BSP mulling to put Cory on P500 bill)

bsp-new-p500-bill-design-with-cory-ninoy

For a person to have his or her image printed on a bill, the person should already be dead, has made a significant contribution to the country, and should embody something unique about the Filipino people.

“To recognize the contributions of President Aquino to the cause of democracy, to the cause of national unity, how do we do that? We intend to put her portrait in the P500 notes,” BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Gunigundo said.

The BSP expects to have the lay-out ready by October, and once approved, the first batch of bills with Cory and Ninoy’s images will be out early 2010.

Along with this possible new design, the BSP is preparing to include new technologies on the current bills to heighten security and to prevent fraud.

This idea first came out after a possible design of a new P500 bill, made by 22-year-old Reno Naval, came out on the internet.

“I posted [the design] as my first post on my website (www.peaceloveandrevolution.com). And then surprisingly, there were a lot of people who saw it, and when the website was [published] on [the newspapers], it spread out like wildfire,” Naval said about the spread of his design on the internet.

New P500 bill - Cory & Ninoy

“Kung ano man ang ma-finalize na konsepto, as long as magkasama sila, masaya silang dalawa (sa disenyo), for sure buong buhay ng mga Pilipino maaalala natin ‘tong dalawang bayani na ito,” he said. With a report from Cecille Lardizabal, ABS-CBN News

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

Cory Aquino - Hero of Philippines Democracy!

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

Eight police officers in full dress uniform served as pallbearers, carrying the casket to a flat-bed truck festooned with yellow and white flowers.

By mid-afternoon, a police spokesman told reporters 150,000 people lined the 18-kilometre (11-mile) route from the cathedral to the cemetery where she was to be laid to rest.

It took over four hours for the vehicle to travel just one third of the route.

Millions more people, including from the 8.7-million-strong overseas Filipino community, monitored the slow progress of the cortege on television and Internet streaming sites.

“She made me proud again to be a Filipino,” said Father Catalino Arevalo, recalling Aquino’s bloodless triumph against the 20-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, three years after her husband’s assassination.

East Timor President and Nobel Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, who flew to Manila to attend the funeral, described Aquino as “one of the greatest people of the 20th century,” likening her to India’s independence hero Mahatma Gandhi.

Men and women standing at least 10-deep on both sides of the road openly wept as the truck crawled through the swelling crowd, while military helicopters circled overhead, showering them with yellow confetti.

People in buildings lining Manila’s streets opened their windows, hung yellow banners and dropped confetti onto the sea of mourners below.

A crowd of nuns, their blue habits wet from the rain, released white doves and yellow balloons — yellow was Aquino’s signature colour.

Ships docked along Manila Bay sounded mournful horns.

Aquino was to be laid to rest alongside her husband Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, who was gunned down at Manila airport in 1983 as he returned home to challenge the dictator Marcos.

President Gloria Arroyo, whom Aquino had turned against over accusations of corruption in the Arroyo administration, made a brief pre-dawn visit to the cathedral to pay her last respects.

She shook hands with the former leader’s son, Senator Benigno Aquino, and prayed briefly over the casket.

Arroyo cut short a visit to the United States following the former leader’s death on Saturday and was met by the Aquino family.

But she was pointedly excluded from the invitation-only mass that was also attended by two past presidents, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada, and foreign diplomats.

The family had rejected Arroyo’s offer to hold a state funeral, reflecting the icy relationship between the only two Filipino women to have led the fractious and impoverished Southeast Asian nation of 90 million people.

Vice President Noli de Castro was the lone senior government representative at the mass, which was broadcast live on television and on giant monitors outside the church.

Two children of Marcos paid their respects on Tuesday and the late dictator’s flamboyant wife Imelda said a reconciliation between the families could prove a “miracle for the Philippines”.

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By Manny Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) -- Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, whose ouster of one of the 20th Century’s most corrupt dictators made her a global icon of democracy, died on Saturday after a 16-month battle against colon cancer. She was 76.

Hero of Philippines People Power!

Her family announced she died in the early hours of Saturday, shortly after a private mass was held in her hospital room. All five children were at her bedside when the end came.

“Our mother peacefully passed away at 3:18 a.m. of cardio-respiratory arrest,” her son, Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., told reporters.

“She would have wanted us to thank each and every one of you for all the prayers and your continuous love and support. It was her wish for all of us to pray for one another and for our country.”

Aquino, known as Cory to millions of Filipinos, was president from 1986 to 1992. But she is remembered, more than two decades after the fact, as the slim woman in yellow who led the “People Power” revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The tumultuous events of those weeks in 1986, which came to a head when up to 1 million people waving rosaries and flowers stopped Marcos’ tanks advancing toward Aquino-backed army rebels, became a fairy-tale revolution that gripped the world.

When a bewildered Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the nation, it set a stirring precedent for dissidents everywhere, from South Africa to South America to Pakistan. Aquino was hailed as a modern-day Joan of Arc.

As news of Aquino’s death spread, hundreds of people began visiting her home and the EDSA shrine where her 1986 revolution culminated, leaving flowers and lighting candles. Many tied yellow ribbons to their cars, and on trees near her home.

Aquino was a reluctant leader at the start. She shed the housewife’s apron only after her politician husband Benigno was assassinated at Manila’s international airport in 1983 on his return from exile in the United States.

Accusing Marcos of ordering the murder, Aquino led protest marches, but was hesitant when elections were called in 1986.

“What on earth do I know about being president?,” she said before taking up the challenge to run against Marcos. Both candidates claimed victory in the election, but Marcos fled into exile when the army turned against him.

LESS SUCCESSFUL

Aquino’s presidency was less successful than the revolution, with a series of coup attempts by the military keeping the administration hamstrung. She was lauded for her courage, but rarely seemed able to get on top of ruling the country.

The specter of army intervention haunted her entire rule. Natural disasters, including Mount Pinatubo’s huge volcanic eruption in 1991, severely battered the economy.

A devout Catholic, Aquino often turned to her faith to steer her through difficult times.

“There was never any moment that I doubted God would help … If it was time to die, so be it,” she said when rebel mortars pounded the presidential palace in 1987.

There was also no doubting her courage.

“I have not always won but … I never shirked a fight,” she said in 1992 before handing power over to her successor, Fidel Ramos. But she did oversee the writing of a new constitution, which among other things limited a president’s time in office to one six-year term.

Born on January 25, 1933 into one of the country’s richest families, the Cojuangcos, Aquino grew up in a world of wealth and politics, being the daughter of a three-time congressman. She married Benigno, one of the country’s most promising politicians, and they had four daughters and a son before he was thrown into prison by Marcos and then forced into exile.

Aquino seemed frail in later years, but was still game for a fight when she thought it necessary. She brought half a million people onto the street in the 1990s when her successor Ramos flirted with the idea of trying to extend his term in office.

She was involved in protests that ended the presidency of Joseph Estrada in 2001, and has supported the campaign to remove current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after her one-time ally was accused of corruption and election fraud.

Arroyo, who is in the United States on a visit, announced a 10-day period of national mourning and said in a message: “Today the Philippines lost a national treasure. She helped lead our nation to a brighter day.”

Aquino’s family has opted against a state funeral and plan to bury her beside Benigno after a private ceremony on Wednesday, her son said.

U.S. President Barack Obama said: “Her courage, determination, and moral leadership are an inspiration to us all and exemplify the best in the Filipino nation.”

Her arch-foe Imelda Marcos, who returned to the Philippines after her husband died in exile, said: “Now that Cory is with the Lord, let us all unite and pray for her and for the Filipino people.”

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