By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2010; A08
QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES -- Benigno Aquino III, who appears likely to win the Philippine presidency on Monday, is unmarried and has no children. By his own account, he has been unlucky in love.
"All the plans I have had with respect to that field have not materialized," Aquino said in an interview. With an impish smile, he added that his romantic disappointments have a political upside: "You don't have the attendant problems of a first lady like Imelda Marcos."
That jab at the widow of former president Ferdinand Marcos fits neatly into the good-vs.-evil campaign narrative that has catapulted Aquino far ahead of eight other candidates in opinion polls. Voters here often see politics as melodrama starring rich families -- and their all-time favorite is the feud between the Marcos and Aquino clans.
Benigno Aquino Jr., father of the bachelor who would be president, was fatally shot at Manila's international airport when he returned from exile in the United States to challenge Marcos in 1983. Taking up the cause of her martyred husband, Corazon Aquino led a "people power" uprising that overthrew Marcos, exposed the shoe-buying excesses of his wife and captivated much of the world. Corazon Aquino served as president until 1992.
When she died of cancer in August, a mass outpouring of grief fired up the dynastic machinery of Philippine politics. As a result, her only son became the chosen one. He's a low-key personality who shoots pool, enjoys jazz and says he had never seen himself as a national savior.
"I wasn't thinking of running," Aquino, known as Noynoy, said during the interview in his mother's modest house on the edge of Manila, where he has lived most of his life. "I wasn't clamoring to be the person responsible for solving all the problems."
But since his mother's death, the 50-year-old has come to embody a national yearning for decent leadership in this Southeast Asian country, where poverty, violence and corruption have surged in recent years. During his campaign stops, thousands upon thousands of Filipinos jump with joy and rush to touch him.
A legacy candidacyAquino is not a dynamic speechmaker, nor is he possessed of an impressive résumé. He ran a company that sold Nike shoes. He worked at his family's 11,000-acre ranch. He helped his mother cope with several coup attempts and was badly wounded during an attack on the presidential palace. (He still has a piece of shrapnel in his neck, and a gunshot wound causes him to walk with a slight limp.) As a lawmaker since 1998, he has had no major legislative achievements.
Aquino readily acknowledges that his candidacy was an invention of voters nostalgic for the moral clarity they associate with his parents.
"It became the entry point," he said. "All of this became possible because of the people."
Although his record is regarded as thin, it is apparently clean. Unlike so many politicians here, he has not been linked to scandal. His honest image -- combined with his mother's legacy of personal probity -- has become the essence of his campaign. "Without corrupt politicians, there are no poor people," says his ubiquitous campaign slogan.
Aquino said that if he were elected, he would aggressively investigate President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose nine years in power have been marked by major corruption scandals. Term limits prevent Arroyo from running again for president, although she is seeking a seat in the House of Representatives.
"The message has to be sent that if you commit a crime, there has to be punishment," Aquino said.
With a 20-point cushion in recent polls and an expert consensus that he is likely to win, Aquino says that only electoral fraud can stop him from becoming president. If he does not win Monday, he has told reporters, his supporters would take to the streets in another "people power" uprising.
'A level playing field'As for what he will do as president, Aquino said tax collection would be a priority. Economists here estimate that tax evasion deprives the government of about a third of its annual operating budget.
"We already have a list of people we will be investigating for tax avoidance," Aquino said, adding that he is prepared to send "people to jail on a fast-track basis."
A potential hiccup in the tax-enforcement scheme is Aquino's blue-blood background. He comes from one of the country's most prominent landowning families. His campaign supporters include families that have dominated the nation's economy for centuries. Economists here say many of these families have gotten away with egregious tax fraud for decades, while pushing the legislature to grant them tax exemptions.
"How beholden am I?" Aquino said, when asked about possible conflicts with moneyed supporters. "Each time I talk to one of the groups, I tell them, 'You will have a level playing field.' Our obligation is to develop the entire economy, not just to develop certain key players."
Doubts about abilityAway from the campaign, there is considerable doubt about Aquino's competence.
"He has the genius of the below-average, looking and sounding like someone who does not know how to govern a country," said Homobono A. Adaza, a lawyer who worked for Aquino's mother before she prosecuted him on charges of involvement in a coup attempt.
"He doesn't have a clue," said Victor A. Abola, an economist at the University of Asia and the Pacific. "We may have a replay of the failures of his mother's government."
Although Corazon Aquino's honesty was never doubted, her leadership was often feckless, bouncing from crisis to crisis, and many remember her tenure for chronic power outages. Her signature issue was land reform, but her relatives resisted -- and some continue to resist -- state efforts to distribute the family estate to 10,000 farmers.
As the election nears, it appears that a plurality of voters has decided to trust Benigno Aquino. "They know his achievements are not inspiring," said Arsenio Balisacan, a professor of economics at the University of the Philippines. "But they are tired of corruption. They are willing to take a gamble."
Special correspondent Carmela Cruz contributed to this report.
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