The FPJ funeral march is slowly starting to inch ahead,. but the lone horse is skittish and they’re having problems. The poor horse is freaking out. Christopher de Leon is trying to calm it down.
It’s a pity they didn’t use a team of horses, or followed the practical example of Ninoy Aquino’s funeral by using a truck.
Remarkable how unfamiliar media is with the rituals of a funeral, particularly a funeral with the attributes of a state funeral. At least Dong Puno knows the significance of a riderless horse with stirrups reversed.
Then again, you would be 22 years old if you were born when Ninoy Aquino was buried in 1983, the most recent, and largest, funeral in Philippine history. Before that, the big public funerals would have been Ramon Magsaysay’s in 1957, which also saw hundreds of thousands on the streets, but had the formality of a state occassion; before that, of Manuel Roxas in 1948 with its contingents from foreign governments, and of Manuel L. Quezon in 1946. Before that, in the 20th century, there was only the reburial of Rizal in 1912.
