Word: aquinos
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...images still stir the spirit: multitudes, swathed in yellow, sweeping Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines; Benazir Bhutto campaigning atop truck caravans in Pakistan; Violeta Chamorro, in a wheelchair, toppling Nicaragua's haughty Sandinista regime. In the past decade, no man has come to power as dramatically and as spectacularly as these women. For feminists everywhere, the rise of Aquino, Bhutto and Chamorro seemed to augur huge steps forward for societies usually characterized by unrelenting machismo. The images, however, were misleading...
Behind each woman in power was a powerful man or an influential political dynasty. In their election campaigns, Aquino and Chamorro constantly reminded voters that they were carrying on the work of their deceased husbands. Aquino is the widow of Benigno Aquino Jr., Ferdinand Marcos' most bitter rival, who was assassinated in August 1983; Chamorro is the widow of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the newspaper publisher whose murder in 1978 led to the downfall of the brutal Anastasio Somoza regime. During her 1988 election campaign, Bhutto never ceased alluding to the legacy of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed...
Unlike Britain's Margaret Thatcher or Israel's Golda Meir, Aquino, Bhutto and Chamorro claimed power not through proven political skills but on the strength and symbolism of their family ties. For much of the Third World, the idea of the nation-state has not evolved too far from the idea of kingdoms; rulers are still heads of extended tribes or vast families, rather than chief executives of the machinery of government. Politics very often pits clan against clan, all the way from Machiavellian patriarchs to the wives and daughters, whose chief duty is still procreation and the maintenance...
Though they have yet to match Gandhi's political acumen, Aquino, Chamorro and Bhutto share with the late Indian Prime Minister the same aristocratic sense of destiny. No other politicians -- certainly no men -- were capable of leading their countries at the time of their ascendancy. Aquino and Chamorro united quarrelsome opposition groups. Only Bhutto had the charisma to overcome the puritanical appeal of Mohammed Zia ul-Haq's Islamic regime. But winning was the easy part. Ruling has proved problematic...
...once, Aquino acted swiftly. Instead of attempting to stall Noble with negotiations -- standard procedure in almost all previous uprisings -- armed forces Chief of Staff General Renato de Villa ordered air force overflights and bombings to level the main rebel encampment. Aquino brusquely dismissed the threat. "This is not a coup," she told reporters. "It is not spreading." Late last week De Villa declared the uprising a failure as the leader of the uprising surrendered. Asked about the loyalty of the rest of the military, De Villa said, "They will not readily join such a foolish adventure." But will they behave...