For the next 10 days, Philippine flags will be flown at half mast, in keeping with the traditional period of mourning following the passing of a former Philippine head of state, former President Corazon Aquino. Historian Manolo Quezon says two executive issuances, Administrative Order 269 and Presidential Proclamation 1950, both meant to effect state honors for a former head of state, are in keeping with tradition and have been in place since the 1940s.

But apart from the hourly military tributes the state will be giving to a former commander-in-chief, and the posting of honor guards to secure the remains of the former President, the Aquino family says there will be no state funeral for the late People Power icon, who was also a vocal critic of the Arroyo government.

"There won't be a state funeral," Senator Noynoy Aquino says. "For all intents and purposes, she had been a private citizen after stepping down." He adds Mrs. Aquino had expressed her desire to be buried beside her husband, Ninoy, at the Manila Memorial Park.

But what may have been the late former President Aquino's wish, is also a break from a more than 60-year tradition of state funerals that began with former President Manuel Quezon's death in 1944.

"The force of tradition in this country is very strong but she and her family are the ones who can set it aside for very valid reasons," explains Historian Manolo Quezon. "A state funeral is the whole thing we've seen in movies: being placed in a gun carriagge, being brought by the six horses, by the soldiers, with the bands playing, the riderless horse with stirrups reversed, someone bearing the presidential flag with black crepe on it; all of that has been dispensed with by the Aquino family, and we don't expect to see it at the Manila Memorial."

Citizen Cory's wish

Quezon says the departure from tradition is in keeping with how Mrs. Aquino lived, and also a poignant message.

"Her presidency was about giving up all the trappings of power that her predecessors had all craved: she refused to live in Malacañang; as much as possible, she dispensed with all the ceremonies other presidents had been obsessed with. In her case, it's a final statement: I never wanted the presidency, I was only there for as long as I needed to be, I am not attached to the very things that came with it," Quezon says.  It's a statement "only she was capable of demonstrating and turning into a lesson."

In place of a state funeral, her wake will be opened for public viewing. Calling it a symbol of Cory's "mystical communion with the public," Quezon says considering it was the Filipino public which had prominently figured in her and husband Ninoy's life, then her wake should also be opened to the Filipino public, the very public that Ninoy had died for and for whom Cory had lived.

"We're used to her being adored, and loved and held in deep affection by the country, but she felt there was a time she experienced her closest friends turning their backs on them during Martial Law. So, who were the people more than friends, more than family, rallied to her and her husband, it was the public and they did it without means of rituals, without the pomp of state. When Ninoy was buried, they put him on a truck. In many ways, this is what you might see again on Wednesday when she's finally laid to rest beside her husband. It will be perhaps the biggest send off we've seen since 1983 but without ceremony, only people doing what is the human thing is to do."