Corazon Aquino

Corazon Aquino – often known as Cory – came to power on the wave of anti-Marcos sentiment triggered in part by the assassination of her husband, the opposition leader Benigno Aquino, in 1983. Dismissed as a mere housewife by her critics, she was a deeply religious woman much given to invoking the Almighty in her speeches.

Indeed, her staunch Roman Catholicism was probably the main if not the sole influence on her political outlook. It made her a potent symbol of opposition to the corrupt Marcos family, but provided little in the way of a programme for government.

She began well nonetheless, repealing the martial law which had been declared in 1972, dissolving the pro-Marcos National Assembly and restoring some measure of electoral democracy under a new constitution drawn up in 1987 and approved in a referendum.

There was disappointment in some quarters that the new system was still dominated by a narrow landowning elite, but the relaxation of controls on the media and non-government organisations was widely welcomed. In the subsequent congressional elections, Corazon Aquino’s People’s Power coalition won more than 90 per cent of the elected seats.

Working with a coalition cabinet team comprising opposition politicians and senior military figures, Corazon Aquino freed 500 political prisoners and granted an amnesty to the New People’s Army (NPA) communist guerrillas in an effort to end the 17-year-old insurgency. She also embarked on peace talks with Muslim secessionists, even travelling in person to meet the secessionist leader Nur Misuari.

But her political honeymoon was brief. In July 1986 she endured the first in a series of coup attempts by Marcos supporters when Arturo Tolentino, Marcos’s running mate in the February election, proclaimed himself acting president. Then her coalition started to fall apart.

By October 1986, Juan Ponce Enrile, Marcos’s former defence minister who had switched sides, was refusing to attend cabinet meetings on the grounds that they were “a waste of the people’s money”.

Corazon Aquino sacked him the next month, after he was implicated in a coup plan code-named “God Save the Queen” (possibly because the conspirators hoped to keep her on as a figurehead).

But the fiercest opposition came from factions within the armed forces, displeased with the ending of martial law and alarmed by her peace overtures to the secessionists.

In August 1987, a coup attempt led by Col Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan claimed 53 lives and prompted a shift to the right in the government’s policy. Tougher measures were instituted against the separatists and projected land reforms were diluted.

A further Honasan-led coup attempt in December 1989 involved some 3,000 troops in a co-ordinated series of attacks, including air raids on strategic military and political targets around the country. Although Corazon Aquino was not hurt, her weakness was exposed – even her vice president openly allied himself with the plotters and called for her to resign.

The people of Manila who had poured into the streets to protect her in 1986 stayed sullenly at home, and in the end she had to call in American air support to suppress the uprising.

Her declining political fortunes were revealed in public opinion polls in early 1991 that showed her popularity at an all-time low, as protesters marched on Malacañang, accusing her of betraying her promises to ease poverty, stamp out corruption, and widen democracy.

After surviving another coup attempt in 1990, in 1992 Corazon Aquino decided to step down and support her former defence minister, Fidel Ramos, as the next president, becoming the first Philippine president not to seek a second term.

Maria Corazón Sumulong Cojuangco was born on January 25, 1933 in Manila into one of the richest families in the Philippines. Her ancestry included Malay, Chinese and Spanish elements. She was sent abroad to be educated to the Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia, the Notre Dame Convent School in New York, and Mount St. Vincent College, also in New York.

She studied mathematics and graduated with a degree in French in 1953, then returned to the Philippines to study law, but in 1954 married Benigno (“Ninoy”) Aquino, the scion of another wealthy Philippine family and a promising young politician.

Aquino himself would probably have been elected president of the Philippines had Marcos not suspended elections. In 1972 he was arrested and incarcerated for seven years on charges of subversion, after which he was allowed to go to the United States. In August 1983, believing that Marcos was dying, Aquino returned to Manila and was shot seconds after alighting from the plane.

Corazon Aquino remained in the background during her husband’s career, rearing their five children at home and, later, in exile. But when Marcos, under pressure from the Americans, unexpectedly called for a presidential election in February 1986, she became the unified opposition’s candidate for the presidency.

Though she was officially reported to have lost the election to Marcos, Corazon Aquino and her supporters challenged the results, alleging widespread fraud. When the army, led by Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Fidel Ramos and defence minister Juan Enrile, declared its support for Corazon Aquino, Marcos left for exile in Hawaii.

Corazon Aquino’s appointment was greeted with euphoria in the Philippines and around the world. She was voted Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year, won the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the United Nations Silver Medal and the Canadian International Prize for Freedom. But her inexperience soon began to show.

After her term ended, Corazon Aquino retired from politics and devoted much of her time to organising aid projects such as rural credit schemes and funding for victims of disasters.

Though she rarely courted publicity, other members of her family provided ample fodder for tabloid gossip. When, to her dismay, her then 24-year-old unmarried daughter Kris gave birth to a son by a 47-year-old divorcee, Corazon Aquino pleaded for privacy, but then faxed every national newspaper a prayer for Kris she had penned for St Valentine’s Day.

On Feb 14, the papers duly carried it in their front pages with a paradoxical plea for the subject to be forgotten: “Give her [Kris] the grace to be humble and to admit the emptiness of her life without Your divine guidance. I am truly sorry, dear Jesus, for sounding impatient at times, even when I pray, forgetting that You, my Lord, love Kris so much more than I do.”

Corazon Aquino is survived by her five children.