Word: benigno
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...exact opposite was foretold by the husband whose murder she vowed to avenge and whose political legacy she promised to preserve. Anyone who succeeded Ferdinand Marcos, Benigno Aquino declared, would smell like horse manure six months after taking power. The residual effects of the dictatorship of Marcos and his wife Imelda, he said, could guarantee no success - only disaster, despair and failure. (See Aquino's life in photos...
...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's life in photos...
...after a popular rebellion in 1986 overthrew Marcos and proclaimed her President in his stead, Benigno Aquino's widow lasted more than six months; indeed, she lasted her entire six-year term. Furthermore, she retained a whiff of sanctity even as her government rotted, even as Filipinos worked hard to prove George Orwell's aphorism that saints are guilty until proven innocent. As Aquino ruled, every month seemed to diminish the political miracle of her astonishing rise to power, but she survived. And her survival guaranteed the continuation of democracy in her homeland...
...that changed on Aug. 21, 1983, when Benigno Aquino returned to the Philippines after three years of exile in the U.S. only to be shot dead even before he could set foot on the tarmac of Manila's international airport. Filipinos were outraged, and suspicion immediately fell on Marcos. At Benigno's funeral, mourners transformed Corazon into a symbol. (Read TIME's 1986 Woman of the Year cover story on Aquino...
Filipinos saw her as that leader, but she declined the role until November 1985. It was then that a Marcos-controlled court acquitted the military men accused of killing Benigno. Marcos then decided to hold a snap presidential election to reaffirm his mandate...