The Quezon City government should buy Corazon Aquino’s house and turn it into a museum which I believe would become a famous tourist spot, as world-famous as Anne Frank’s house in the Netherlands.

I felt sad when I read today that President Corazon Aquino’s house at No. 25  Times Street would be renovated by her family because, as the eldest son Senator Benigno Aquino III said, “it has many defects now” and renovation would help the family to move on.

I wish the QC government could come to an arrangement with the family to buy the house now, with  perhaps an agreement that the family would continue to occupy it but preserve its basic elements. Instead of renaming Times Street to President Corazon Aquino Street. Please retain the name because it is also historically signifant – being named after the Manila Times, the newspaper which gave Senator Benigno Aquino Junior the break, which boosted his political career.

The purchase by the QC government headed by Mayor Feliciano Belmonte would have a special resonance.  His wife, Betty Go-Belmonte, and  President Aquino had a rare friendship that asked each other nothing except prayers.  I know because Mrs Belmonte was once my boss at Philippine Star and I reported directly to her as a roving investigative reporter.  She used to talk a lot about Mrs Aquino.

I hope the family would preserve President Aquino’s room as it is now, not for sentimental reasons but to show the Filipino nation and the world – this is how a president lives and should live – simply and  modestly. Her very lifestyle is an indictment of the nation’s political class but sets an example for future generations.

I know this is asking a lot from the Aquino family. But how many Filipino families have produced two heroes and would be remembered a century from now?

I don’t want the nation to move on from the example set by Mrs Aquino. And one way to do that is to preserve her room and her home for the generations to come .