Philippines mourns democracy icon

MANILA, Philippines – Military honor guards carried former President Corazon Aquino’s flag-draped casket to a school gym Saturday for public viewing, as Filipinos mourned the beloved democracy icon who swept away a dictator and fought off seven coup attempts.

The accidental opposition leader – whose rise began only after her husband’s assassination – died before dawn Saturday in a hospital after a yearlong battle with colon cancer, which had spread to other organs and left her bedridden since late June, her only son, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said. She was 76.

Aquino’s son said that days earlier he and each of his four sisters went to their mother’s bedside where they “were told to say everything we wanted to say.”

Corazon Aquino rose to prominence after the assassination in 1983 of her husband, opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. The uprising she led in 1986 brought down the repressive 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos and served as an inspiration to nonviolent resistance across the globe, including those that ended communist rule in eastern Europe.

“She was headstrong and single-minded in one goal, and that was to remove all vestiges of an entrenched dictatorship,” Raul C. Pangalangan, law professor at the University of the Philippines, said earlier this month. “We all owe her in a big way.”

But Aquino struggled in office to meet high public expectations. Her land redistribution program fell short of ending economic domination by the landed elite, including her own family. Her leadership, especially on social and economic reform, was often indecisive, leaving many of her closest allies disillusioned by the end of her term.

Still, the bespectacled, smiling woman remained beloved in the Philippines, where she was affectionately referred to as “Tita (Auntie) Cory.”