Word: aquinos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Read "Asian Heroes: Corazon Aquino...
...warping of an ideal must have distressed Aquino, who was one of the few opposition leaders to succeed as commander in chief. Just three days after a pair of Marcos allies defected from his camp because of the egregiously rigged electoral result that favored a decaying dictator over Aquino, Asia's first female President was sworn in. At the time, Cory Aquino took office as little more than a symbol: the grieving widow of opposition politician Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., who was gunned down at the Manila airport just moments after returning from exile in the U.S. (See Aquino...
...after a rocky beginning and a slew of attempted coups, Aquino evolved into a President who merited her six years in office. She did so not as the devout Catholic whose impassioned rhetoric inspired EDSA, but as an administrator driven by a more Protestant industriousness. In the end, her tenure was nothing more than a brick-by-brick laying of democracy's foundation. That, though, was more than enough. Look at what happened, by contrast, to other figureheads of peaceful resistance: Poland's Lech Walesa, for instance, fumbled so badly after taking office that he lost...
...Half the Battle Aquino also understood, like nelson mandela, that the enduring success of People Power depends upon the leaders it thrusts into office knowing how to make a graceful exit. Even though the Filipino electorate would surely have granted her another presidential term, she anointed a political successor, Fidel Ramos, and eased into retirement. Yet Aquino's example has not been fully followed in her homeland, where another woman President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has taken advantage of electoral loopholes to elongate her tenure. Far worse are the Robert Mugabes of the world, once genuine heroes who long outlived their...
...more crucial at this juncture in history. Democracy, if only in name, has touched much of the developing world. But the legacy of People Power is constantly threatened by the repressive actions of those who later claim to represent it, from Pakistan and Iran to the Philippines itself. Aquino, in her helium-inflected voice, once mused: "I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it." Like much of what Cory said, this idea - that power comes as much from the consent of the governed as the barrel of a gun - seems a simple insight. But in the world today...