Aquino’s Growth : Reluctant Candidate, Confident President

Corazon Aquino started her political career as a reluctant candidate but became a determined campaigner who rallied millions of her countrymen behind a drive to end Ferdinand E. Marcos’ 20 years as president.

To the surprise of many Filipinos and foreigners, the 53-year-old self-described housewife managed to channel widespread dissatisfaction with Marcos into a powerful stream of opposition that swept him from power.

She became well-known only after her husband, Benigno, was assassinated in 1983, a slaying that started the chain of events that today brought Marcos down.

Daughter of Wealthy Family

Aquino is a daughter of the wealthy Cojuangco family of Tarlac province, which has sprawling sugar plantations. Her first cousin, Eduardo Cojuangco, is a close business associate of Marcos and believed to be one of the wealthiest men in the Philippines.

She attended high school at Raven Hill Academy in Philadelphia and Notre Dame in New York. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Mount St. Vincent College in New York, majoring in French and mathematics.

She enrolled in a law course in Manila in 1956 but gave up her studies to marry Benigno S. Aquino Jr.

Cory Aquino’s only training in politics came from her family and as the wife of a man who was considered Marcos’ main political rival.

No Previous Accomplishments

Her campaign biography listed no previous accomplishments or jobs other than that of a housewife, and Marcos during the campaign frequently belittled her, once saying a woman’s place is in the bedroom.

When martial law was decreed in 1972, Benigno Aquino was jailed for eight years. Cory Aquino has described those years as among the most traumatic in her life.

She was her husband’s “eyes, ears and voice in the stifling environment of martial law,” according to a biography provided by her campaign staff.

“Some people tell me I did not have any formal education in politics,” she said in an interview. “But I was living with one of the best teachers in politics.”

Laughed Off Candidacy

In 1985, when Marcos decided on a special election to show his hold on the country, Aquino laughed off suggestions that she be a candidate, saying, “I don’t know anything about the presidency.”

But by the time the campaign ended, she was confidently proclaiming, “What Mr. Marcos can do, I can do better.”

She campaigned throughout the country, always smiling and always wearing yellow. The color symbolizes the yellow-ribbon homecoming planned for her husband when he returned from three years of self-exile in the United States, only to be assassinated at Manila airport.