Husband’s Death ‘Changed Everything’ : Aquino, Quiet Candidate, Hears Roar of the Crowd

The yellow banners in the auditorium of the Assumption Convent School read, “Thank God for Cory,” and a couple of the older nuns in the audience beamed with pride when presidential candidate Corazon Aquino took the stage.

It was Cory Aquino’s old school, one of the series of Catholic convents, academies, high schools and colleges here and in the United States that provided her with about as devout and pious an education as a Philippine girl can get. And on Friday, the girls and teachers of Assumption showed Aquino they remembered.

They shrieked and applauded and chanted “Cory, Cory, Cory!” as she arrived. They tied yellow ribbons--the symbol of the Aquino campaign--to railings, wall fans and shrubbery. When she spoke, they wildly applauded every other sentence.

Before she finished more than a few paragraphs of the campaign speech, condemning her opponent, President Ferdinand E. Marcos, as a lying dictator and an evil genius, a smiling and almost embarrassed Aquino interrupted herself.

“I think I can stop now,” she said, “because I think I already have won over the whole crowd.”

Suddenly, a few thin female voices were heard from the back: “We love Marcos!”

“Boooo!” the auditorium thundered with the contempt of the others.

“No,” Aquino said, waving her hands at the audience. “Let’s be democratic. Let everyone be heard.”

Later that day, in an interview with The Times, Aquino added: “I had to say that. I don’t want to be like Marcos.”

The incident at the school was “vintage Cory,” according to the school’s Mother Rosario, who was in the audience Friday and remembers Aquino from her convent school days.

‘Shy, Very Sharp’

“She has always been that way--shy, almost retiring, but very sharp, intelligent and always fair,” Mother Rosario said.

It also was a moment that symbolized much of Aquino’s campaign for the Feb. 7 election. Her supporters have tried to cast a devout and politically reluctant mother of five as the most serious threat in two decades to one of Asia’s longest-serving and most authoritarian leaders.

Her campaign, judging by the size of the crowds, has captured the imagination and support of millions of Filipinos. It is a campaign built on resurrecting the concepts of honesty and decency in the face of oppression, a return to the democratic principles that preceded Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972--all laced with the Roman Catholicism that predominates in the Philippines.

But it is a campaign that has had to struggle constantly against Aquino’s image as a politically naive housewife and mother, against her inexperience as a lawmaker and politician and against the widely held belief that she is only a facade, that behind her is a faceless, nameless group of “advisers” who will inherit power if she is elected.

The Aquino Contrasts

Aquino speaks in a soft, deliberate monotone in a country where most leaders thunder and emote from the podium. She speaks of peace and national reconciliation in a country where warlords and private armies still rule many regions. She talks of morality and women’s liberation in a country where maids and prostitutes are among the top exports.

And yet, wherever she has spoken in her three weeks on the campaign trail, people have come by the tens and hundreds of thousands, and they have applauded.

Just three years ago, Corazon Cojuanco Aquino, who turned 53 on Saturday, was in exile in Boston, doing the dishes, baking bread, taking the kids to school, leaving politics to her husband. Now she is the Philippine political opposition’s best and, many here believe, last hope to take control of a country of 54 million people in one of its most critical hours.

“I’ve psyched myself up into thinking I can do this; it really isn’t me,” she said Friday as her minibus inched through a mob of supporters shouting, “We love you, Cory!” and “Happy birthday, Cory!” outside the convent school. Nonetheless, she said, she is now determined to “give it everything I have.”

It was a decision Aquino said she made in November, when she finally succumbed to pressure from opposition politicians, who convinced her that she is the only one who can represent the unified opposition needed to beat Marcos and his political machine.

“I just remembered the words of Ninoy,” she said, referring to her late husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., by his nickname. “He always used to say, ‘If there’s anything you could have done and didn’t, then you’ll regret it the rest of your life.’ ”

Benigno Aquino, her husband of 29 years, was assassinated Aug. 21, 1983, as he returned from three years of self-imposed exile in the United States. He was shot in the head as he stepped from a plane at Manila International Airport while surrounded by 2,000 soldiers.

To this day, Aquino suspects Marcos and his handpicked military commanders of being responsible for the killing, which eliminated the one political leader many Philippine political analysts believe could have defeated Marcos in a fair election. Marcos has denied that he or the military were involved in the killing, and military officials, including the chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, were exonerated last month after a lengthy trial. Marcos blames the Aquino assassination on a gunman hired by Communists.

Wealthy Landowner’s Daughter

One thing is certain, though. The killing radically changed the life of Cory Aquino, who according to friends was until August, 1983, the classic Philippine wife.

The daughter of a wealthy Philippine landowner and sugar baron from Tarlac province, 50 miles north of here, Aquino had a privileged and comfortable childhood. She was educated here and at Catholic girls’ schools in the United States and earned a bachelor’s degree in French from Mount St. Vincent College in the Bronx.

She returned to the Philippines in 1953 and soon married Benigno Aquino, then a prominent young lawyer. As his political career blossomed--he was one of the youngest men ever elected governor of a province--Cory Aquino concentrated on her children; her four daughters and one son range in age from 14 to 27.

“A lot of people underestimate Cory’s intelligence and knowledge of politics because they don’t understand how things work in the Filipino family,” said cardiologist Rolando Solis, who was Benigno Aquino’s personal physician and a friend of the family. “The woman may be in the background, but her power behind the scenes is second to none.”

Aquino’s eldest daughter, Maria Cruz, said: “It’s true, a lot of people don’t understand my mother and what happened to her. When we were growing up, she was always in the kitchen. She was always with us. Her role was really with the children. She knew where her place was. But when my father died, . . . everything changed.”

Place Is ‘in the Bedroom’

Gender has become a major issue in the campaign. Marcos has said in his speeches that he was embarrassed to be running against a woman. Last week he told an audience in suburban Manila that a woman’s place is “in the bedroom.”

Marcos’ wife, Imelda, who holds public office at the national and local levels, compounded the issue Thursday when she told American journalists that Aquino is “the complete opposite of what a woman should be” because she is challenging the power of a man.

In her interview with The Times, Aquino said she is happy that sex has become an issue. “I hope it still is,” she said. “I don’t want to be thought of as being sexless.”

She said she does “not intend to fight men--I don’t want to be a sexist.”

Bernardo Villegas, a social scientist and director of the Center for Research and Communication, a private think tank in Manila, said that at the heart of the issue is “the role of the typical Filipina--a housewife, very much behind the scenes.”

In the Philippines, he said, men are outwardly macho and appear to have all the power. Traditionally, they dominate the military, politics and the business world. In reality, though, the real power is in the hands of the women, he said.

“But the power of the woman here is that she keeps it behind the scenes and puts the man out in front of her,” he went on. “In a normal situation, anthropologically, Cory Aquino’s candidacy for president would be impossible here.”

‘Game Rules’ Changed

But these are not normal times, he said, and added: “Only a woman with her background--someone who has sacrificed her husband to the regime--can face a person who has controlled every part of this country for the past 20 years. And under these circumstances, Cory’s candidacy is acceptable to the Filipinos.”

“The rules of the game” were altered by the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Villegas said, and Cory Aquino stepped out from behind her man only because her man is no longer there.

But Aquino’s decision to run for president was the final step in a process of transformation that actually began 13 years earlier--the day in 1972 when Marcos jailed her husband as an accused murderer and threat to his government.

It was the day Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines. And Benigno Aquino, who was considered Marcos’ most popular potential opponent even then, ended up spending the next seven years and seven months in solitary confinement.

“Cory came from a very political family herself, so she was exposed to it from a very early age,” said Assumption’s Mother Rosario, who has remained a close friend of the family. “The day Ninoy was arrested, though, she was forced to take a more active role--she became his political surrogate, smuggling messages in and out of jail for him and serving as his spokesman.”

Politics Was Second

Aquino’s daughter Maria Cruz remembers her mother’s first press conference after her father was jailed. “She was so nervous she could hardly talk,” she said.

Even during the martial-law years, though, Mother Rosario said, “Cory knew that because of her Catholic upbringing . . . politics came second to her marriage--until, of course, that marriage ended tragically. Only then did she emerge from her role as Ninoy’s surrogate.”

According to friends and family, Aquino brought with her the insights, knowledge and shrewdness that she learned while working behind her husband.

Still, Aquino’s critics wonder whether exposure to a politically dynamic husband is qualification enough to run a diverse country of 7,100 scattered islands, and they worry about Aquino’s reluctance to identify her behind-the-scenes advisers.

In campaign speeches, Marcos and his wife have made a major issue of Aquino’s refusal to divulge the identity of her inner circle of confidants, alleging that those advisers are actually Communists who support the burgeoning insurgency in the country.

Aquino has continually denied the charge, and in The Times interview, she said she will not name them because she fears for the lives and livelihoods of the men who advise her if she loses and, if she wins, that there will be infighting for Cabinet jobs.

Aided by Religious Leaders

Other critics charge that Aquino, who never appears at a rally without a series of prayers and the presence of local religious leaders, is exploiting her Catholic background to gain votes in a nation where nearly 90% of the people are Catholic.

Such charges did not faze Mother Rosario, who also refused to speculate on the identity of Aquino’s advisers. But Mother Rosario quickly noted that she believes Aquino’s most important assistant right now is God.

“This whole thing of campaigning for office really does go against her grain,” the elderly nun said during one of the interruptions in Aquino’s speech Friday. “I really think it’s God who gives her strength and light.”

Noting again the quiet shyness of Aquino’s youth, Mother Rosario added, “Only God could have given her the gift and the grace to do this.”

Outside the auditorium, Aquino’s eldest daughter had another theory on her mother’s closest adviser.

“Sometimes,” Maria Cruz said, “I really think it’s my father.”