As election nears in Philippines, Aquino scion seems to be heavy favorite

Benigno Aquino III has a 20-point cushion in recent polls. If he does not win, he has said that supporters would take to the streets in another "people power" uprising. (Nicky Loh - Reuters)

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 candidacy

Aquino 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 ability

Away 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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Corazon Aquino Dies; Ex-President of Philippines Led 'People Power' Revolution

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 1, 2009

Corazon Aquino, the unassuming widow whose "people power" revolution toppled a dictator, restored Philippine democracy and inspired millions of people around the world, died Saturday after a battle with colon cancer, her family announced. She was 76. Widely known as "Cory," the slight, bespectacled daughter of a wealthy land-owning family served as president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, the first woman to hold that position.

She was widowed in 1983 when her husband, political opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., was assassinated upon his return from exile to lead a pro-democracy movement against authoritarian president Ferdinand E. Marcos. It was a popular revolt against Marcos after a disputed election that later enabled Corazon Aquino to assume power.

In her six tumultuous years in office in the fractious, strife-torn, disaster-prone archipelago, Aquino resisted seven coup attempts or military revolts, battled a persistent communist insurgency and grappled with the effects of typhoons, floods, droughts, a major earthquake and a devastating volcanic eruption. Her tribulations earned her the nickname "Calamity Cory."

As she dealt with those challenges, she took pride in restoring democratic institutions that had been gutted under Marcos's 20-year rule. And she presided over a series of relatively free elections, the dismantling of monopolies and an initial spurt of economic growth.

Her administration failed to make much headway in alleviating poverty, stamping out corruption or delivering basic services. It bequeathed her successor an economic slump marked by protracted, costly power failures that reflected inattention to the country's energy needs.

Despite the turmoil that dogged her presidency, Aquino oversaw the first peaceful transfer of power in the Philippines in 26 years. She returned to private life with relief, although she remained politically active.

She played a role in popular protests that led to the ouster of President Joseph Estrada in January 2001. She initially supported his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but increasingly turned against her in recent years, siding with opponents who accused Arroyo of vote-rigging and corruption.

Aquino's transition from housewife to president to respected elder stateswoman and democracy advocate represented a phenomenal metamorphosis for a self-effacing mother of five who, before being drafted to take on Marcos in 1986, had never before run for public office.

Born Jan. 25, 1933, in Tarlac Province, Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco grew up as the sixth of eight children in a family of wealthy landowners in the province about 70 miles north of the capital. After attending exclusive grade schools, she went to the United States in 1946 to continue her secondary education at Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia, Notre Dame convent school in New York and the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York.

There, in 1953, she earned a degree in French and mathematics. She returned to Manila to study law and met Benigno S. Aquino Jr., an aspiring politician whom she married in 1954. Survivors include their five children, Sen. Benigno S. Aquino III, Maria Elena A. Cruz, Aurora Corazon A. Abellada, Victoria Eliza A. Dee and Kristina Bernadette A. Yap; two brothers; three sisters; and a number of grandchildren.

For years she stayed in the background as the quiet, reserved, devoutly Catholic wife of the gregarious and ambitious Benigno Aquino, who was a governor and senator and seemed destined to become the Philippines' president until he was arrested in 1972 just hours after Marcos declared martial law.

He remained in prison until 1980, when Marcos allowed him to seek heart treatment in the United States. Corazon Aquino often described the next three years, when her husband was a fellow at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her family lived together in a Boston suburb, as the happiest in her life.

After Benigno Aquino returned to Manila in August 1983 and was assassinated by military men while being taken into custody at the airport -- a killing that Corazon Aquino maintained was ordered by Marcos -- the 50-year-old widow reluctantly became a public figure as she sought to keep her husband's ideals and memory alive. She gradually emerged as a unifying force for the splintered opposition, even as she repeatedly ruled herself out as a presidential candidate.

But when Marcos called a "snap election" for Feb. 7, 1986, in hopes of capitalizing on his foes' divisions and winning a new mandate, Aquino reluctantly agreed to run against him, acceding to the wishes of supporters who had gathered a million signatures on a petition for her candidacy.

In formally registering to run, she listed her occupation as "housewife." Indeed, her preparation for the post was probably best summarized by her comment to reporters several months earlier: "What do I know about being president?"

Clad in her trademark yellow -- evoking the yellow ribbons that had proliferated around Manila to mark her husband's return from exile -- Aquino proved to be a formidable, and fearless, campaigner. She vowed to "dismantle the dictatorial edifice" built by Marcos in his two decades in power, "eliminate the social cancer of graft and corruption" under his rule and hold him accountable for the murder of her husband.

In one hard-hitting speech shortly before the election, she warned Marcos, "Don't you dare frustrate the will of the Filipino people, because you will have an angry people on your hands."

Days before the vote, she told The Washington Post in an interview that many Filipinos were risking their fortunes and their lives to back her. "It's really a do-or-die situation now," she said. "So many have realized that this is our moment of truth, and they just have to give their all now or that chance may never come again."

Aquino fully expected Marcos to resort to election fraud if the vote did not go his way, but she relied on the axiom that, as one Marcos campaign official put it in a moment of candor, "mathematically, you can only cheat so much." And she vowed to lead massive demonstrations if the election was stolen from her.

Indeed, a rubber-stamp legislature officially proclaimed the reelection of Marcos to a new six-year term on Feb. 16, 1986, after a protracted vote-counting process marked by widespread fraud and violence. Aquino then launched a civil disobedience campaign to protest the result.

Six days later, a military mutiny led by followers of Marcos's defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, broke out in Manila. It was quickly joined by Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, a distant cousin of Marcos then serving as acting armed forces chief of staff. The mutineers declared support for Aquino, and the country's Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Jaime Sin, called the faithful into the streets to block any attack on them by Marcos's forces. Millions of Filipinos responded, giving birth to "people power."

Three days after the revolt began, Marcos was forced to flee the Malacañang presidential palace, where he had lived since taking office in December 1965. He eventually landed in Hawaii, where he died in 1989. Aquino took over as president, declaring that "the long agony is over."

One of her first acts was to have Malacañang fumigated. But even then Aquino refused to live or work there, preferring to hold office in a nearby guest house and opting to live in a modest home a block away. Initially, she even insisted that her motorcades stop at red lights -- until her security guards put an end to that egalitarian gesture.

The ouster of a dictatorship through nonviolent popular demonstrations became the model for democracy movements all over the world, and Aquino was named Time magazine's "Woman of the Year" for 1986. She was also the toast of Washington when she visited in September of that year.

When she addressed a joint session of Congress, her path into the chamber was strewn with yellow roses, and lawmakers were smitten by her commitment to democracy as she delivered an emotional appeal for aid.

"You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it," Aquino told the standing-room-only audience. "And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it." Within hours, the House responded by unexpectedly bypassing normal procedures and voting to approve a $200 million emergency aid package for the Philippines.

When then-Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) told her after the speech, "You hit a home run," Aquino replied without hesitation, "I hope the bases were loaded."

But the honeymoon soon began to sour, and Aquino was beset at home by increasing unrest, including a series of military coup attempts. After one of them, in August 1987, she displayed her combative streak by filing an unprecedented libel suit against a Manila newspaper columnist who wrote that she "hid under her bed" during the abortive revolt. She even took a reporter into her bedroom to show that it would have been impossible to hide under the bed, which sat on a platform.

"I don't want the soldiers of the republic to ever doubt for an instant that their commander-in-chef is a woman of courage that they look upon and respect," she said in explaining the lawsuit.

When her presidential term came to an end on June 30, 1992, it was with unmistakable relief that she turned over the reins to her elected successor, Ramos, her former defense secretary. In a last bit of symbolism to show she was returning to private life as an ordinary citizen, she drove away from Ramos's inauguration in a white Toyota she had purchased, shunning the government Mercedes available to her.

In a speech at the U.S. State Department in October 1996 to accept the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, Aquino explained her role and motives with characteristic modesty.

"I am not a hero like [Nelson] Mandela," she said, referring to the South African leader who spent 27 years as a political prisoner before becoming president. "The best description for me might, after all, be that of my critics who said: 'She is just a plain housewife.' Indeed, as a housewife, I stood by my husband and never questioned his decision to stand alone in defense of a dead democracy against an arrogant dictatorship enjoying the support of the United States."

She said she ruled out sharing power with the Philippine military because she wanted to "rebuild democracy" and "there was just no room for a junta" in her country.

"Perhaps the military were also envious that in the first year of my term, I ruled by decree," Aquino said in her speech. "This was necessary to abolish the rubber-stamp parliament, sequester stolen wealth, annul the Marcos Constitution, pare down the powers of the president and sweep the judiciary clean. Each law I promulgated diminished my powers until, with the last decree, I stripped myself of the power to legislate. Could I have trusted the military to share so much power with me?"

Her departure from office as "one of the proudest moments of my life," Aquino recalled. "I was stepping down and handing the presidency to my duly elected successor. This was what my husband had died for; he had returned precisely to forestall an illegal political succession. This moment is democracy's glory: the peaceful transfer of power without bloodshed, in strict accordance with law."

Cory Aquino in Serious Condition

News Desk
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 02-07-2009

The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Centre and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.

In an earlier phone interview at 6:20pm, Siytangco said the former president, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.

“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.

There was no word from actress and TV host Kris Aquino, the former President’s youngest daughter and for a time the family spokesperson on her mother’s condition.

Kris’ manager and longtime friend Boy Abunda said she was weeping and inconsolable.

Abunda said he spoke with Kris by phone at around 6pm Wednesday.

“She asked the people to allow her this time for herself. She said she would rather not talk about her mom’s condition at the moment,” Abunda said.

Call for prayers

Earlier Wednesday at the first of a novena of healing Masses for the 76-year-old Aquino at the Greenbelt 5 chapel in Makati City, Siytangco said “Tita Cory” could “talk and pray” but was “not well”.

“She needs all your prayers,” Siytangco said.

The open-sided chapel was standing room only for the noontime Mass dedicated to Aquino and others afflicted with cancer.

“Our hearts are burdened because of the illness of our beloved former president, and the pain and discomfort she has to endure,” broadcaster Korina Sanchez said, reading the novena prayer.

“You took the hand of our dear sister Cory, as she struggled through every trial, as she confronted every challenge, and embraced every cross of her life. Take her hand now and have mercy on her and upon all poor souls who are in agony and make Your will known to them,” said Sanchez, who has asked the former president to be a sponsor at her wedding to Senator Mar Roxas.

Among those present at the Mass were former members of the Aquino Cabinet led by former Senate president Franklin Drilon and wife Mila, former finance secretary Ramon del Rosario Jr, Popoy Juico and his wife Margie, who served as Aquino’s appointments secretary, Manila Mayor Fred Lim, and anti-Arroyo activists Dinky Soliman and Leah Navarro of the Black and White Movement.

In Negros Occidental, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra also called on the faithful to pray for Aquino’s well-being.

Kabankalan Bishop Patricio Buzon did the same in extolling Aquino’s legacy to the nation, which was to end the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 and restore freedom and democracy to the nation.

‘We need her’

In a statement issued by his office, Aquino’s only son, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said he “sincerely thanks all those who attended the novena Mass and those who continue to pray for his mother’s healing".

Drilon said he last spoke with Noynoy Aquino last week and that the latter “did not sound very optimistic because of his mother’s appetite problem”.

“We have no other recourse but to pray, pray very hard, for her,” Drilon said in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to lose Cory at this time when we need her most.”

Aquino, known as the icon of Filipino people power, remained active in social and political causes even after stepping down from office.

In July 2005, she added her voice to the growing call for President Arroyo’s resignation over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, and later joined protest rallies against the administration.

Senators Roxas and Manuel Villar Jr, both presidential aspirants, called on the people to pray for Aquino.

“I have heard the news that President Aquino is undergoing a difficult time in her illness,” Roxas said, adding that he joined the people in praying for her quick recovery.

“President Cory is one of the greatest leaders I respect and emulate,” he said, adding:

“Mrs President, please fight on. We need you.”

Villar said the former president was entering “a critical period in the battle against cancer”.

“We will forever be indebted to President Cory for her significant contribution to the restoration of democracy in the country. In this time when there are serious threats to our democracy, she remains the icon that our people turn to for hope,” Villar said in a statement.

“Our prayers are also with the members of her family. May their unshakeable faith in God strengthen them in this difficult time,” he said.

‘Let’s storm heaven’

Even Malacañang called on the public to pray for Aquino’s immediate recovery.

“That’s bad news,” Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello, who served as justice secretary during the Aquino administration, said of reports that Aquino was seriously ill.

“Let’s start praying for her. Let’s storm heaven with our prayers for the former President to be given a new lease on life,” Bello said in a phone interview.

He said he had always included Aquino in his prayers, and that he would go to St Jude Church near Malacañang to offer prayers for her.

Malacañang held a thanksgiving Mass early in May for the successful colon cancer operation of Aquino at Makati Medical Centre. Arroyo, then in Syria, called to instruct her Cabinet officials to organise the Mass.

In attendance at that Mass was Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco and wife Margarita Cojuangco, and brother-in-law Agapito “Butz” Aquino.

Reports from Fe Zamora, Allison W. Lopez, Marinel R. Cruz, Christine O. Avendaño and TJ Burgonio in Manila; Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas