Maria Corazon "Cory" Sumulong Cojuangco Aquino was the 11th President of the Philippines, serving from 1986 to 1992. She was the first female president of the Philippines and Asia. A self-proclaimed "plain housewife",[2] Aquino was married to Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. (1932–1983), a leading figure in the political opposition against the autocratic rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. After her husband was assassinated upon his return from exile in the United States on August 21, 1983, Aquino, who had no prior political experience, became a focal point and unifying force of the opposition against Marcos. She was drafted to run against Marcos in the 1986 snap presidential elections. After Marcos was proclaimed the winner despite widespread reports of electoral fraud, Aquino was installed as President by the peaceful 1986 People Power Revolution.
(January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009)
Aquino's presidency saw the restoration of democratic institutions in the Philippines, through the enactment of a new Constitution which limited the powers of the presidency, restored the bicameral Congress, and renewed emphasis on civil liberties. Her administration was likewise hampered by several military coup attempts by disaffected members of the Philippine military which derailed a return to full political stability and economic development.
Aquino died on August 1, 2009 from colon cancer.
Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco was born to Jose Cojuangco of Tarlac and Demetria Sumulong of Antipolo, Rizal. She was the sixth of eight children in what was considered to be one of the richest Chinese-Mestizo families in the Philippines,[3][4] in Tarlac.[5] Her ancestry was one-eighth Tagalog from her maternal side, one-eighth Kapampangan and one-fourth Spanish from her paternal side, and half-Chinese from both maternal and paternal sides.[citation needed]
She was sent to St. Scholastica's College in Manila where she finished grade school as class valedictorian in 1943. In 1946, she enrolled for a year in high school at the Assumption Convent in Manila. Later, she was sent to the United States to study in Kuba at the Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia, the Notre Dame Convent School in New York, and the College of Mount Saint Vincent, also in New York.[3] Meanwhile, she worked as a volunteer in the 1948 United States presidential campaign of Republican Thomas Dewey against President Harry Truman.[5] She studied Liberal Arts and graduated in 1953 with a Bachelor of Arts in French Language, with a minor in Mathematics. She intended to become a math teacher and a language interpreter.
Aquino returned to the Philippines to study law at the Far Eastern University, owned by the family of the late Nicanor Reyes, Sr., who had been the father-in-law of her older sister Josephine. She gave up her law studies[6] when in 1954, she married Benigno Servillano "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr., the son of a former Speaker of the National Assembly. They had five children together: a son, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, who was elected to the Philippine Senate in 2007, and four daughters, Maria Elena A. Cruz, Aurora Corazon A. Abellada, Victoria Eliza A. Dee, and actress-television host Kristina Bernadette A. Yap. Aquino had initial difficulty adjusting to provincial life when she and her husband moved to Concepcion, Tarlac, in 1955, after her husband had been elected the town's mayor at the age of 22. The American-educated Aquino found herself bored in Concepcion, and welcomed the opportunity to have dinner with her husband inside the American military facility at nearby Clark Field.[7]
A member of the Liberal Party, Aquino's husband rose to be governor of Tarlac, and was elected to the Philippine Senate in 1967. During her husband's political career, Aquino remained a housewife who helped raise the children and played hostess to her spouse's political allies who would frequent their Quezon City home.[4] She would decline to join her husband on stage during campaign rallies, preferring instead to stand at the back of the audience in order to listen to him.[7] Nonetheless, she was consulted upon on political matters by her husband, who valued her judgments enormously.[4]
Benigno Aquino soon emerged as a leading critic of the government of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Nacionalista Party, and there was wide speculation that he would run in the 1973 presidential elections, Marcos then being term limited. However, Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, and later abolished the 1935 Constitution, allowing him to remain in office. Aquino's husband was among those arrested at the onset of martial law, later being sentenced to death. During his incarceration, Aquino drew strength from prayer, attending daily mass and saying three rosaries a day.[7] As a measure of sacrifice, she enjoined her children from attending parties, and she herself stopped going to the beauty salon or buying new clothes, until a priest advised her and her children to instead live as normal lives as possible.[7]
In 1978, despite her initial opposition, Aquino's imprisoned husband decided to run the 1978 Batasang Pambansa elections. Aquino campaigned in behalf of her imprisoned husband and for the first time in her life, delivered a political speech,[2][7] though she willingly relinquished having to speak in public when it emerged that her six-year old daughter Kris was more than willing to speak on stage.[7]
In 1980, upon the intervention of United States President Jimmy Carter,[2] Marcos allowed Senator Aquino and his family to leave for exile in the United States, where he sought medical treatment.[3] The family settled in Boston, and Aquino would later call the next three years as the happiest days of her marriage.[2] He returned without his family to the Philippines on August 21, 1983, only to be assassinated on a staircase leading to the tarmac of the Manila International Airport, which was later renamed in his honor. Corazon Aquino returned to the Philippines a few days later and led her husband's funeral rites, where more than two million people were estimated to have participated, the biggest funeral ever in Philippine history.[2]
On March 24, 2008, the Aquino family announced that the former President had been diagnosed with colon cancer.[54] While she had initially been informed by her doctors that she had only three months to live,[55] Aquino pursued chemotherapy. In public remarks made on May 13, 2008, she announced that blood tests indicated that she was responding positively to the medical treatment.[56]
By July 2009, Aquino was reported to be in a very serious condition and confined to Makati Medical Center due to loss of appetite.[57] It was announced that Aquino and her family had decided to cease chemotherapy and other medical interventions.[58][59]
"Our mother peacefully passed away at 3:18 a.m. (19:18 GMT Friday) of cardio-respiratory arrest," her son, Senator Benigno Aquino III, told reporters in Manila.[62]
The Aquino children declined Malacañang Palace's offer of a state funeral after the government pulled out Aquino's security detail in July 2009 as her illness worsened. Every living Philippine president is entitled to a security detail. The government responded to the political fallout claiming that the pullout was a mere "bureaucratic lapse," where the tour of duty of the bodyguards "expired."[63]
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