Key figures: Corazon Aquino (died August 1, 2009), Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III (son, elected president May 10, 2010), Benigno Aquino Jr. “Ninoy” (husband, assassinated 1983), Ferdinand Marcos (deposed dictator)
Summary
Corazon Cojuangco Aquino — “Cory” — the former President of the Philippines and iconic leader of the 1986 People Power Revolution, died on August 1, 2009, at age 76 from complications of colorectal cancer. Her death set off a national outpouring of grief so intense that it transformed the Philippine political landscape: within weeks, her son Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III announced his presidential candidacy on a wave of public demand, and on May 10, 2010, he won the Philippine presidential election with approximately 15.2 million votes — 42.1 percent of the total — in what observers considered the most credible Philippine election in a generation. His inauguration on June 30, 2010, completed a circle: the Aquino family’s moral authority, forged in opposition to dictatorship and confirmed by Cory’s presidency, now returned to Malacañang Palace in the person of her son.
Born January 25, 1933, in Paniqui, Tarlac, into the powerful Cojuangco landowning family, Corazon rose to the forefront of Philippine politics following the August 21, 1983, assassination of her husband Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. at Manila International Airport. Ninoy’s murder — carried out in broad daylight as he disembarked from a flight from exile, with Philippine soldiers present — ignited massive opposition to the 21-year authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. By 1986, the accumulated weight of Marcos’s corruption, human rights abuses, and electoral manipulation, combined with Corazon’s status as a widow who had suffered most from the dictatorship, produced the People Power Revolution: a peaceful mass uprising that forced Marcos from power without a single shot fired by the demonstrators.
The Aquinos and the Marcos Dictatorship
Benigno Aquino Jr. and Marcos were contemporaries and rivals in Philippine politics from the 1960s. When Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, Ninoy was arrested the next day. He spent nearly eight years in military detention, was tried before a military tribunal, and sentenced to death in 1977. An international outcry led to Marcos releasing him to the United States for heart surgery in 1980. Ninoy spent three years in exile in the US, primarily at Harvard and MIT, while Corazon maintained the family’s presence in the Philippines, raising their five children (Maria Elena, Aurora Corazon, Benigno III, Victoria Elisa, and Kristine Bernadette) largely on her own.
When Ninoy announced in August 1983 that he was returning to the Philippines — saying “I have returned of my own free will to join the forces of freedom in the last struggle for democracy” — Marcos reportedly warned him not to come. On August 21, 1983, moments after his plane landed at Manila International Airport, Ninoy was shot in the back of the head by a military escort. The Philippine government claimed the assassin was a communist gunman named Rolando Galman, who was himself immediately shot dead by soldiers. Independent investigations later implicated military figures under Marcos’s command. An estimated two million people lined the streets of Manila for Ninoy’s funeral procession.
The People Power Revolution (1986)
By early 1986, Marcos was under intense pressure domestically and internationally. He called a “snap election” for February 7, 1986, confident he could manage the outcome. Corazon Aquino ran against him, backed by the Catholic Church (whose Cardinal Sin issued a call to arms) and a broad coalition of opposition groups. International observers documented systematic fraud: ballot-stuffers, voters turned away, tallies altered. A group of computer operators from the Commission on Elections walked out in protest, declaring they could not falsify the numbers in good conscience. On February 22, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and General Fidel Ramos withdrew their support from Marcos and barricaded themselves at Camp Aguinaldo; Cardinal Sin broadcast a call on Radio Veritas for citizens to surround the camps and protect the rebel officers.
From February 22 to 25, 1986, an estimated one million to two million Filipinos crowded Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Manila in an unarmed civilian cordon that Marcos’s military could not dislodge. On February 25, both Marcos and Corazon Aquino were sworn in as president in separate ceremonies; the United States withdrew recognition from Marcos and extended it to Aquino. That evening, Marcos, his wife Imelda, and their inner circle were flown by US military helicopters to Clark Air Base and then to Hawaii. He died in Honolulu in September 1989.
The People Power Revolution has since been studied globally as a model of nonviolent democratic transition — alongside the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (1989), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and Myanmar’s subsequent democracy movement.
Corazon Aquino’s Presidency (1986–1992)
Corazon Aquino governed the Philippines for six years under extraordinary difficulty. A new constitution, ratified by 76.3 percent of voters on February 2, 1987, restored democratic institutions abolished under Marcos. She survived seven coup attempts between 1987 and 1989, including an attempt in December 1989 by Marcos loyalists and military factions that briefly captured portions of Makati and required US air cover to suppress. Economic recovery was hampered by the political instability, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo (which forced closure of Clark Air Base and devastated agricultural regions), and the debt burdens inherited from the Marcos era.
She deliberately left office on June 30, 1992, refusing to run for re-election — an act that in itself signaled a break from the region’s authoritarian norms, in which leaders typically sought to entrench themselves permanently. Power transferred peacefully to Fidel Ramos, her former defense chief and one of the two officers whose 1986 defection had made People Power possible.
Legacy and the 2010 Election
Corazon Aquino was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2008. She remained publicly active during her illness, speaking at events and continuing to advocate for democratic norms — including opposing attempts by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to extend her term beyond the constitutional limit. She died on August 1, 2009, at the Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan, Metro Manila. An estimated 300,000 people attended or lined the route of her state funeral procession on August 5.
The public grief at her death immediately triggered calls for her son Noynoy — a senator who had been a relatively low-profile politician — to run for president. He had been her consistent attendant throughout her illness. On September 9, 2009, he announced his presidential candidacy, explicitly framing his campaign around his parents’ legacy of democratic struggle.
The May 10, 2010 Philippine presidential election was notable for using automated counting machines for the first time, accelerating vote tabulation and reducing the opportunities for traditional fraud. Noynoy Aquino won decisively:
- Noynoy Aquino (Liberal Party): 15,208,678 votes — 42.1 percent
- Joseph Estrada (Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino): 9,487,837 votes — 26.3 percent
- Manuel Villar (Nacionalista Party): 5,573,835 votes — 15.4 percent
The margin — more than 5 million votes over the second-place finisher — was large by Philippine standards and was seen as a genuine mandate rooted in Cory’s legacy. Noynoy Aquino was inaugurated on June 30, 2010, delivering an address explicitly invoking his mother’s sacrifice and his parents’ fight for democracy.
Noynoy Aquino’s presidency (2010–2016) was organized around the campaign slogan daang matuwid (“the straight path”) — an explicit anti-corruption platform that directly echoed his parents’ moral authority. His administration secured the impeachment and conviction of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 on charges of failing to accurately disclose his assets — the first successful impeachment of a chief justice in Philippine history. The Philippine economy achieved GDP growth rates of 6–7 percent annually through most of his term, driven by business process outsourcing, overseas remittances, and infrastructure investment. He served the full constitutional single term, leaving office on June 30, 2016 — again, a demonstration of the Aquino tradition of voluntarily relinquishing power within constitutional limits that his mother had established in 1992.
Women’s Leadership in Democratic Transitions
Corazon Aquino’s role in the People Power Revolution and her subsequent presidency occurred in a historical moment when women’s leadership in anti-authoritarian struggle was exceptional. Though the Philippines in 2010 had a long history of female political participation — dating to the Suffragist movement of the early 20th century — democratic transitions in Eastern Europe (1989–1991), Latin America (1980s), and Asia were predominantly led by men. Cory Aquino was thus an outlier: a woman who became the face of nonviolent resistance, who negotiated the transition to democracy, and who exercised executive power in her own right rather than as a substitute for a male family member.
Her presidency (1986–1992) demonstrated that women could navigate the complex institutional and security challenges of post-authoritarian consolidation. She faced military coup attempts from Marcos loyalists, managed economic recovery under structural adjustment, and navigated the fallout from the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption — crises that tested executive competence regardless of gender. By stepping down voluntarily in 1992, she reinforced a norm of constitutional term limits and peaceful power transfer — norms that were far from universal in the Asia-Pacific region and that her example helped entrench.
The 2010 Philippine presidential election, catalyzed by Cory’s death, thus represented not merely a personal family triumph but a validation of women’s leadership in democratic politics. It occurred in a global context in which female heads of state remained rare; Cory’s legacy as a successful democratic leader offered a precedent and a symbol that the Philippines could draw on and that inspired democratic reformers across Asia and beyond.
Global Democratic Legacy
Corazon Aquino remains a canonical figure in the global history of nonviolent democratic transition. Academic studies of civil resistance and regime change — particularly the work of Erica Chenoweth on nonviolent campaigns — identified the People Power Revolution as a landmark case in demonstrating that mass nonviolent action could topple even a well-entrenched authoritarian system with military backing. Her leadership alongside Cardinal Sin, the business community (the Makati Business Club), and the Catholic Church showed that diverse constituencies could coalesce around a shared democratic vision.
The People Power Revolution’s international resonance — its invocation in the context of later democratic uprisings in Myanmar, Hong Kong, and elsewhere — attributed significant symbolic weight to the Aquino family’s sacrifice and Cory’s embodiment of democratic virtue. Her death in 2009 and the 2010 election that her memory produced were thus not parochial Philippine phenomena but part of a global conversation about democratic resilience, the power of moral authority, and the possibility of political transformation through peaceful mass action.
Significance
Corazon Aquino’s significance to 2010 is inseparable from her son’s election. Her death in 2009 created a political vacuum that her legacy immediately filled: Noynoy’s candidacy and victory were the direct political expression of her moral authority. The 2010 Philippine election demonstrated that democratic legacies can persist across generations and that the sacrifice of political martyrs (Ninoy) and moral leaders (Cory) can shape electoral outcomes decades later.
More broadly, Corazon Aquino’s life stood as proof that nonviolent popular movements could topple entrenched authoritarian systems and that women could lead democratic transitions at the highest levels of government. She remains, alongside Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, and a handful of others, among the definitive figures of late 20th-century democratization — a status confirmed rather than diminished by the 2010 election that her memory produced.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Corazon Aquino — Comprehensive biography, People Power Revolution leadership, presidency, death (August 1, 2009), and political legacy.
- Britannica: Corazon Aquino — Biographical entry covering her life, leadership in the People Power Revolution, and democratic legacy.
- Wikipedia: 2010 Philippine presidential election — Full results, automated counting, and electoral context; Noynoy Aquino’s 42.1% victory margin.
- People Power Revolution — Britannica — Historical overview of the February 1986 nonviolent mass uprising and its global democratic significance.