Maria Montelibano told me this story: It was the hardest thing in the world to persuade Cory Aquino to relocate to Malacañang after Edsa. She began by holding office at the Cojuangco Building, then went back to Times Street. Her aides pleaded with her to abandon her old home as it was a security nightmare. She finally did, but refused to move to the office Ferdinand Marcos had occupied in his time. She would have nothing to do with it. She moved instead to the Guest House, defending her decision by saying, “I am a guest of the Filipino people.”

She was utterly convinced of that, and lived by it. Everything there, the furniture, the paintings, the treasures—indeed all the power and opulence the Palace resonated with, or reeked of—she said, belonged to the people. She would admonish her apos against playing with the bric-a-brac, saying it wasn’t theirs to play with, it was the people’s. The admonitions were such that at one point one of them, upon finding a chocolate bar on a table, asked innocently: “Can I eat this? Or does this also belong to the people?”

I remembered this story when I saw that article some days ago about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo registering on Forbes magazine as the 44th most powerful woman in the world. Forbes, of course, is clear that the list does not confer a positive note on power. Indeed, the explanation for why Arroyo is powerful is not altogether flattering. It includes: “A potential power grab is in the works…. Congressional allies are pushing through changes to the Constitution that would see the Philippines adopt a parliamentary system; then Arroyo could … become prime minister.”

But the infinite danger of calling someone powerful, notwithstanding the apparent lack of judgment about its being good or bad, is that it does give a luster to her or him. It’s the same thing with Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The caveats are also plentiful: The title is meant to be judgment-free, the Person of the Year can be both good and bad. But the grant of prominence by itself does surround the person with an aura of being larger than life, subverting the qualification.

All of it makes you wonder about the true meaning of power.

Where I stand at least, what being powerful means is being responsible for power. Or quite heroically, as in Cory’s case, recognizing that power, particularly the kind reposed on leaders, emanates not from yourself but from the people. You are only as good a leader as you are recognized by your followers. And you are only as good a leader as you give your followers reason to do so. By earning their trust, by keeping their trust.

That is certainly not done by gorging on P1-million dinners. What gives that a bitterer taste is the contrast between the way Cory treated public property while she was president and the way Gloria does while she is non-president. Made even bitterer by the contrast in justifications. Cory was not unlike the activists of my days, when revolution still drew idealists to its fold like a beacon in a storm-tossed sea, who believed that taking a single piece of thread from the masses was an epic crime. Cory held the same thing, give or take a bar of chocolate or two.

Gloria? Well, let’s just say, may araw din kayo.

Just as well, where I stand, what being powerful means is being distrustful of power. That insight comes from Oriana Fallaci who interviewed the world’s most powerful men in her time, from Henry Kissinger to the Shah of Iran, from Yassir Arafat to Deng Xiaoping. The only way to deal with power, she said, is to be distrustful of it. It’s the only way to keep yourself sane, it’s the only way to remain human. The truly powerful men and women did so, and were so. The rest were just bastards.

Cory did so, and was so. You can’t have anyone who was more distrustful of power, who was more uncomfortable with power. From start to end, she took only as much power as she needed to mend a tattered country, to heal a wounded land. To the extent that she knew how, heaven knows she wasn’t perfect, though heaven knows too some are less imperfect than others. Her friends continue to talk of how during the harshest challenges to her government, which were the coups, she never once thought to declare emergency rule or, heaven forbid, martial law. She had the stoutest defense of all, she said. It wasn’t a loyal military, it was a loyal people. It wasn’t the power of the soldiers’ arms, it was the power of the people’s love.

Armed with the same power, she left power willingly, quietly, gracefully.

Gloria? Well, read Forbes’ explanation again about why she is powerful.

Forbes has its own world, and its own system of reckoning of the people that inhabit it. I have my own. In my book, the truly powerful people on this earth, past and present, are the likes of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joe Burgos—and Corazon Aquino.

These were (are) people who never sought power the way misers seek riches, but sought only to do good as best they knew how. These were people who never hoarded power the way misers hoard gold, counting the coins by candlelight every night and dreaming of more, but shared themselves with others as best they knew how.

In the final reckoning, whatever the mirage and sheen and illusion of the present, only good is really larger than life, evil is just smaller than life. Look at Marcos and Cory and ask yourself who was, or is, the colossus that straddled the world. Look at Gloria and Cory and ask yourself who is larger than life and bigger than death.

Margaret Thatcher once said: “Being powerful is like being a lady: if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

Some people are ladies, some are just ladies of the night.