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When years ago the Chronicle editorialized that Cory Aquino's presidential behavior will be the yardstick presidents - past and future - would be measured by, we meant it.

She may not have been fully equipped - technically for governance and public office - but she displayed a character trait that Marcos and many other presidents never had - the virtue of honesty.

It is a virtue that describes what you do when no one is looking. Six coups may have shattered the stability of the Cory era - but it was not because of her corrupt ways, scheming deals and lying lips. There were soldiers too impatient to get dramatic changes and jealous that they were not put in a pedestal of power after EDSA I.

People are grieving today - as much for Cory's discovered illness of cancer of the colon - as the magic that is lost in today's efforts to ferret out the truth and call for honesty in public service because of her potential absence. Cory Aquino was President Honesty - we know what she says is what she will do and what she said was what she did. No ifs and doubts about her. She was the Philippine's Honest Abe.

Whenever Cory Aquino steps on the stage today, she deodorizes every crook and criminal on stage with her mere presence. The Woman in Yellow - the Woman of the Year in 1986 as voted by Time Magazine - is Honesty Personified.

One other leader who exercised leadership by examples of credibility in his personal life was Mahatma Gandhi who claimed "My life is its own message." He said "You must watch my life, how I live, eat, sit, talk, behave, in general. The sum total of all these is my religion."

What the leader says and promises to his followers - and how he keeps them - define the framework of the relationship of the shepherd and the sheep to grow. A leader who has lost credibility - can never lead. She can only be followed grudgingly or by force. An honest (wo) man is followed because he/she leads by example.

In the face of the growing distrust of Filipinos for most of their leaders, it is apropos to bring the "Be Honest" slogan espoused by the BCBP to the forefront of our campaign for moral rectitude in our national life. The campaign starts right at home - to where we are - enjoining us to be honest, starting with ourselves.

Even after reading the same for years, the BCBP slogan on honesty does not fail to strike a responsive cord in our hearts - every time we get to read it. It is because it captures the moral dilemma facing modern man today.

It is a call that eggs us to accept that we need more community Don Quixotes to challenge the riddle of the windmills. The need for more moral warriors in the community is never more wanting today as we see so few of them around.

The grace of God in each of us who are created to His Likeness enthuses us - even at birth - to be honest. Yet we are surrounded by a mob that seems immersed in dishonesty. There are those whose moral judgment are already impaired as to be unable to distinguish right from wrong.

There are those who - by choice - prefer the worldly comforts and influence - that their continued dishonesty affords. There are those who are so caught in a loop, they could no longer extricate themselves from the web of dishonesty that keeps their existence in place.

These days, to be honest is to be a square peg in a round hole. To be a needle in a haystack. To be a voice in the wilderness.

But it is precisely the scarcity of this virtue and the paucity of those who practice it - that the BCBP has hurled this challenge to themselves and the community they can morally influence.

The slogan has become BCBP's dress code. Let us pray for its continuing good influence on the Philippine way of life.