Corazon Aquino was propelled into office as President of the Philippines in an extraordinary sequence of events which began with the assassination of her husband and culminated in the unceremonious ejection of a military dictatorship.
In 1986 the country’s ruler, Ferdinand Marcos, declared himself winner of the general election, but the contest had been so obviously rigged that a wave of what was called “people power” swept him into exile. Four US Air Force helicopters spirited Marcos and his wife, Imelda, out of their impoverished country after 20 years of dictatorship during which she famously accumulated 2,700 pairs of expensive shoes.
Into office in their place came Mrs Aquino, a slight, bespectacled mother of five who had been widowed when her husband, Benigno, was shot dead in broad daylight at an airport ringed by Marcos’s troops. The killing spelt the beginning of the end for the Marcos regime. Many in Washington and elsewhere had backed him, despite his trademark brutality and corruption, because he seemed a bulwark against communism.
Into office in their place came Mrs Aquino, a slight, bespectacled mother of five who had been widowed when her husband, Benigno, was shot dead in broad daylight at an airport ringed by Marcos’s troops. The killing spelt the beginning of the end for the Marcos regime. Many in Washington and elsewhere had backed him, despite his trademark brutality and corruption, because he seemed a bulwark against communism.
But the public murder of a political rival sealed his fate. Mrs Aquino’s coming to power was greeted with huge international approval, but her term in office would turn out to be beset with difficulties, both for her country and for herself. The first woman President of the Philippines, she inherited a political and economic mess which she called the “basket case of South-East Asia”. When she left office in 1992 few of the high hopes she raised had been fulfilled. Yet she had the satisfaction of achieving a peaceful handover of power to an elected successor, no mean feat in a country which had little enough experience of democracy.
Madame President – Time magazine
And the most incredible aspect of it was that at the center of this gift was not an atom bomb, but an ordinary woman. A woman who had until then remained almost invisible within her husband’s shadow; whose deepest beliefs would laughed to scorn in any fashionable salon. Yet she was the real thing. Fearless beyond measure, honest in the way that only a person who really believes in honesty can be. Cory had the power to awe not only the simple, but the cynical: the simple because she was like them, only greater; and the cynical because she was unlike them and yet still greater.
Philippines President Arroyo said, “The nation lost a national treasure. An icon of democracy.”
Time magazine People Power’s Philippine Saint: Corazon Aquino
Midnight always threatened Aquino but never struck; and she was a good woman whose goodness alone, at the very end, was what proved enough, if only by an iota, to save her country.
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Benigno Aquino, returned to the Philippines after three years of exile in the U.S. only to be shot dead even before he could set foot on the tarmac of Manila’s international airport. Filipinos were outraged, and suspicion immediately fell on Marcos. At Benigno’s funeral, mourners transformed Corazon into a symbol.
The Martyr’s Wife – Time
The devout and stoic Roman Catholic widow became the incarnation of a pious nation that had itself suffered silently through more than a decade of autocratic rule. Millions lined the funeral route and repeated her nickname as if saying the rosary: “Cory, Cory, Cory.”
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But it would be nearly three years before she would learn to take advantage of her power. Instead, she concentrated on the fractious opposition, using her moral influence to help it choose a leader to oppose Marcos.
