Aquino Marks 5 Years in Power, Calls for Unity

President Corazon Aquino marked her fifth year in office Monday with an appeal for unity as protesters demanded her resignation.

Aquino addressed about 20,000 supporters at a shrine marking the site where, in February, 1986, tens of thousands of people blocked tanks sent to crush rebellious soldiers during the four-day revolt that toppled Ferdinand E. Marcos. The nearly bloodless “people power revolution” lifted Aquino to power.

“My hope is that our government will be united with the people that it serves, that our businessmen will be united with our communities, that the strong and wealthy will be united with the weak and the poor,” Aquino said. “I also hope that we shall bequeath a broader and stronger democracy.”

Aquino has survived at least seven military coup attempts, most led by officers who supported her in 1986 but have turned against her for political and personal reasons.

“Since I became president, I’ve tried to bring together our military and civilians,” she said. “I hope in the times ahead, there will be greater unity between civilians and the military and we will have no more problems like those in 1987 and 1989,” when the bloodiest coup attempts took place.

About three miles from the government-sponsored celebration, 300 protesters marched against Aquino and demanded her resignation.

The rally was led by former Assemblyman Homobono Adaza and former Sen. Eva Estrada Kalaw, who had supported Aquino’s rise to power but now are among opponents who accuse her government of corruption, incompetence and lack of vision.

“The significance of the (revolt) is the ouster of grafters, those who sold our sovereignty, the notoriously undesirables, the incompetents,” Adaza said. “But now, we have more grafters in government, we are more enslaved (to foreigners), we are more deeply indebted to our foreign creditors.”