CORAZON AQUINO:THE FORMER president of the Philippines, Corazon Aquino, universally known as Cory, who has died of colon cancer aged 76, was the most recognisable symbol of the turbulence endured by her country over the last four decades.
The 1983 slaying of her husband, the opposition politician Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, by assassins acting for dictator Ferdinand Marcos, prompted this shy, religious widow into challenging his regime. Its attempt to rig the presidential election in February 1986 led to its being overthrown, and to her installation as president.
Aquino avoided the limelight, and was more comfortable among priests and nuns than politicians. Her “Mother of Sorrows” image proved both endearing and effective. It enabled her to count on the support of Cardinal Jaime Sin, ecclesiastical primate in the world’s third largest Catholic nation (83 per cent of the 90 million Filipinos are Catholics), and shielded her in the seven coup attempts launched by her enemies over the six years of her presidency. However grudgingly, the Philippines military establishment was forced to protect the woman whose democratic mandate emanated from the uprising of February 1986, which had taken the old regime and the world at large by surprise.
Aquino was known for her trademark yellow dresses, a colour enthusiastically taken up by her supporters. Yet for all her moral virtue, as a president Aquino was naive and weak. Her “reconciliation” policy towards Marcos’s henchmen meant that many such apparatchiks remained unpunished for crimes committed during the martial law era of 1972-86.
Born in Tarlac province to an elite landed family owning vast plantations, Maria Corazon Cojuangco seemed destined for a genteel and cultured existence. She left law school to marry the up-and-coming politician Ninoy Aquino. He later became leader of a fragmented opposition to Marcos, who, in 1965, had defeated Diosado Macapagal (father of current president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) to acquire the office to which he clung for the next 21 years.
Following Marcos’s declaration of martial law in September 1972, Ninoy Aquino denounced the dictator, was imprisoned and was later indicted on trumped-up murder charges that left him in custody for seven years. When Ninoy required treatment for heart problems, Marcos allowed the Aquinos to go to the US, hoping they would prefer comfortable exile to a Manila prison cell.
However, Ninoy decided to return when an ailing Marcos looked to be losing his grip on power. As Ninoy stepped off the aircraft at Manila airport on August 21st, 1983, he was murdered by armed soldiers, in full view of television cameras. A grieving Cory returned to the Philippines the following day, and instead of retiring into seclusion, allowed Ninoy’s open coffin to travel from place to place before the funeral, which attracted a crowd of two million.
When, in November 1985, Marcos called a snap election, she was the obvious choice of the previously fragmented opposition.
As widely anticipated, the election was marred by massive fraud, but by the end of the campaign it was clear that Aquino was in the ascendant. Thus, when Marcos’s election commissioners delayed the vote tally by almost three weeks, and then sought to declare the dictator the winner, a military revolt combined with millions of civilians taking to the capital’s streets to demand Marcos’s departure.
The euphoria of February 1986 was quickly replaced by disappointment. Her 1987 constitution, with its ban on abortion and divorce, also restored traditional dynastic government and the presidential system, a feature that benefited powerful families like her own. She was inexperienced and surrounded by squabbling advisers, and her presidency was plagued by massive debts and unremitting intrigues by her enemies. Her retirement in June 1992 came as a relief to herself and her hard-pressed allies.
Four daughters and a son survive her.
Maria Corazon Aquino, born January 25th, 1933; died August 1st, 2009