Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino dies at 76
Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, whose “People Power”
movement pushed out longtime strongman Ferdinand Marcos less than three
years after her husband’s assassination, has died at age 76, her family
announced Saturday.
Aquino, the first woman to lead the Philippines, had been battling
colon cancer since March 2008 and died of cardio-respiratory arrest at
3:18 a.m.Saturday (3:18 p.m. Friday ET), said Mai Mislang, a spokeswoman
for her son, Philippine Sen. Benigno Aquino III.
Funeral arrangements were being set up, Mislang said. Philippine
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has also announced a 10-day mourning
period for the former president, said Ray Donato, the country’s
consul-general in Atlanta.
“She was the agent of change in Philippine democracy, and almost all
the Filipinos I know revered her during her presidency,” Donato said.
Aquino had been born into a wealthy family and was educated in the
United States. She had not been involved in politics before her husband,
opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., was gunned down at
Manila’s airport in August 1983 as he returned from exile.
The political novice took over the leadership of her husband’s
movement after his death and challenged Marcos in a 1986 election,
making a yellow dress her trademark and bolstered by the support of the
country’s Roman Catholic churches.
Marcos had been backed by the United States, the former colonial
power in the Philippines, for two decades as a stalwart anti-communist.
He and his wife Imelda were friends of then-President Ronald Reagan and
his wife, Nancy. But widespread allegations of electoral fraud and a
mutiny by the country’s military led the Reagan administration to
withdraw its support, and Marcos went into exile in Hawaii.
Aquino took office in a country with a $28 billion debt, widespread
poverty and a persistent Marxist insurgency.
She put in place a U.S.-style constitution that limited presidents to
a single six-year term and survived seven coup attempts including one
that was supressed with American help.
She also oversaw the closure of the major U.S. military bases in the
country before leaving office in 1992. The bases had been a bulwark of
American power in the Pacific since the early 1900s and employed nearly
80,000 Filipinos, but Aquino’s opponents argued the country was too
dependent on the United States. Aquino announced in 1990 that it was
time to begin negotiating the “orderly withdrawal” of U.S. forces.
- CNN
|