On June 24, 2021, former Philippine President Aquino III (Benigno Aquino III) passed away at the age of 61.
Aquino III inspects the honor guard at the Anila port before leaving office in 2016. He became president in 2010 and served a six-year term.
Image source: EPA
Aquino III died of kidney disease at his home in Quezon City, Philippines. In order to commemorate him, the current President of the Philippines Duterte (Rodrigo Duterte) announced the beginning of ten days of national mourning, during which all flags were flown at half-mast.
Aquino III’s alma mater, Ateneo de Manila University (Ateneo de Manila University), held three masses for him in public mourning. This scale of commemoration is unprecedented in the Philippines.
What has Aquino III done for the Philippines to make Filipinos respect him so much?
01
Extraordinary life experience
Filipinos respect Aquino III not only for Aquino III himself, but also for his family.
Aquino III is the fifteenth president of the Philippines, and his mother Corazon Aquino ( Corazon Aquino, commonly known as Mrs. Aquino ) is the eleventh president of the Philippines. Aquino III’s father, Benigno Aquino Jr. (Benigno Aquino Jr.), is a famous Philippine politician who has served as a senator and provincial governor.
In 2010, Aquino III commemorated his mother Corazon Aquino.
Image source: Agence France-Presse
Not only does his family of three have a profound impact on Philippine politics, the Aquino family is even more impressive.
Aquino III’s grandfather was the Speaker of the National Assembly during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, when Japan fostered a puppet government. Aquino III's great-grandfather is more famous as a general in the revolutionary army of Emilio Aguinaldo (Emilio Aguinaldo), the first president in Philippine history.
Four generations of the Aquino family have been engaged in politics, which gave Aquino III an aura as soon as he entered the political arena.
In 1960, Aquino III was born. His life was uneventful from the beginning. He graduated from the best school in the Philippines, majoring in economics, and his journey has been smooth. However, when he was 12 years old, his family experienced a political turmoil.
Aquino III's father, Benigno Aquino Jr., pursued democracy and once opposed the authoritarian rule of then President Marcos ( Ferdinand Marcos) as a senator. In 1972, he was arrested for subversion and court-martialed the following year.
When Aquino III was 20 years old, his father suffered several heart attacks and was allowed to go to the United States for medical treatment. Except for Aquino III, who was receiving education, his family went to the United States with his father. After graduating from college, Aquino III also went to the United States to reunite with his family.
In 1983, Benigno Jr. returned to the Philippines, preparing to promote the cause of democracy again.
At this time, he was no longer just an opponent of Marcos, but more concerned about how to make the Philippines transform well and smoothly.
He told reporters that if democracy could be restored, he would be willing to reconcile with Marcos. In his view, tolerance, rationality, and non-violent resistance are the bright way forward.
However, when Benigno arrived at Manila International Airport , he was assassinated. Who killed him remains a mystery.
Benigno Aquino Jr. has pursued Philippine democracy throughout his life. In order to commemorate him, the Philippine government named Manila International Airport after him.
Image source: politics.com.ph
But at the time, everyone suspected that it was instigated by Marcos, which indirectly led to the collapse of the Marcos regime.People remember Benigno Aquino Jr., with more than 2 million people waiting for hours to pay their respects to his funeral, shouting "Benigno Aquino Jr., you are not alone" in local languages.
In this way, Marcos’ nearly 20 years of authoritarian rule was disrupted by Benigno Aquino Jr.
Marcos and his wife in Los Angeles in 1982. Mrs. Marcos was a former beauty pageant queen, and both were known for their lavish lifestyles.
Image source: AP News
Three years later, in 1986, in the election, Marcos was considered fraudulent by the people, and large-scale mass demonstrations broke out again. This demonstration was called the People Power Revolution ( or Santos Avenue Revolution) .
People at the time commemorated Benigno Aquino Jr. with yellow ribbons and supported the inauguration of Corazon Aquino, Aquino III's mother, who participated in the election and was considered to have received more votes.
The Filipino people carried out non-violent resistance, and Marcos did not sit still. He sent the army, but told the army to disperse the crowd but not to attack, and tried to communicate with the United States to retain power.
But the United States did not support Marcos. The forces opposing Marcos included the political, military and public circles. Marcos was gone.
In the end, a textbook non-violent regime change took place, Marcos was forced to go into exile in Hawaii, and Corazon Aquino became president.
The non-violent model of the Philippines was later inherited by democratic countries such as South Korea, thus igniting the spark of the third wave of democratization.
The characteristic of this revolution, as Aquino III’s mother later said, is “the least costly in history.” The reason for this is inseparable from the thoughts of Benigno Aquino Jr. and the role of Corazon Aquino in stabilizing public sentiment.
The Aquinos found a more stable and just path of transformation for the Philippines, which was commendable at a time when the Philippines had suffered serious political decline.
After Corazon Aquino came to power, he first revised the Philippines' constitution. The revised constitution limited the power of the president and re-established a bicameral Congress, generally restoring the rule of law to what it was before Marcos - the latter's destructive changes. The Philippine Constitution made the law work for itself.
However, due to the outbreak of various problems arising from the Marcos authoritarian era, eight coups broke out during the Corazon Aquino administration. The coups were organized largely by the Communist Party of the Philippines, which was dissatisfied with the country's relationship with the United States.
In one of the coups, the rebels even broke into the presidential palace and shot and killed three bodyguards protecting Aquino III. Aquino III was also shot five times; Aquino III survived the disaster and had a wound around his neck until his death. There was a bullet that had not been taken out.
Thanks to the efforts of the Aquino family, the Philippines has gradually moved towards a more mature democratic politics. From a certain perspective, the Aquino family is promoting changes that are beneficial to the country but harmful to their own family.
You must know that for hundreds of years before this, the Philippines was dominated by powerful families - this was called "local giant democracy" by American scholar Benedict Anderson.
02
The collapse of local giants
As early as the Spanish colonial period, there were some mixed-race people of Chinese descent and local Filipinos in the Philippines, known as Mestizos (Mestizos).
These people were Christianized from birth and mastered Spanish - at that time, only 5% of the people in the entire Philippines were proficient in the colonizer's language.
1700 map of the Philippines, yellow belongs to the Spanish colonial area, pink is Sulu country , including part of today's Philippines. Spanish colonization of the Philippines lasted for three hundred years from the end of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century.
Image source: geacron.com
Because of their language advantage, this group of people participated in the Spanish "galleon trade" and gradually became richer and more educated.
By the 19th century, as Spain became increasingly marginalized in European affairs and its colonization of the Philippines became weaker and weaker, the mestizo people gradually acquired land and increased their wealth.
At the end of the 19th century, they had begun to call themselves Filipinos. The most famous among them was Rizal (Rizal). He wrote the novels "No Offense" and "The Insurgent" in Spanish, which satirized the tyranny of Spain and the abuses of Catholic priests. Hypocrisy and mestizo greed.
Rizal was executed by the authorities in 1896, but he also sowed the seeds of nationalism in the Philippines. Even the " non-violent " that Benigno later insisted on also started from Rizal, who was the first person in the Philippines to propose non-violent national self-determination.
The main nationalist fighter of the 1890s, Rizal on the left. Rizal was called "the first Filipino" by Benedict Anderson. Benigno Aquino Jr. was later commemorated around the Rizal statue.
Image source: Wikipedia
American colonization allowed the mestizo people to establish a real oligarchy. Their economic foundation was originally based on manor agriculture, and the system brought by the United States was based on winner-take-all elections.
The map of the Philippines colonized by the United States in 1900 (blue) is almost the same as the Philippines today.
Image source: geacron.com
The giants in these places compete with each other under the supervision of the United States, but in fact it always benefits their own class. They completed the marriage of wealth and political power.
But such a power structure is still unstable:
On the one hand, when more Filipinos become rich and educated, they are bound to intervene or resist;
On the other hand, each family is worried that a certain family will dominate the power. Thereby competing and balancing each other.
The democratic system left by the United States could have helped the people express their voices and also limited power, such as presidential term limits, etc. However, the Philippines has still moved towards " political decline" in the sense of Fukuyama (Francis Fukuyama) . Anderson writes in "The Ghost of Comparison":
"Local giant democracy contained within itself the seeds of decay, and around the end of the 1960s these seeds clearly began to sprout. Unbridled, parasitic access to state and private resources. Sexual plunder has put the Philippines on a long-term decline track. "
In the 1950s, the Philippines was originally the most advanced and developed region in Southeast Asia. This was largely due to its strategic position and foreign trade.
But thirty years later, the Philippines has become the most depressed and poorest country in Southeast Asia, and the entire country has fallen into polarization.
Those families that control power and wealth are like tumors of the country, sucking the country's wealth insatiably. At that time, only 5% of the people in the country were working hard to make money, accounting for half of the total income. However, they had to rely on taxes to support the huge interest groups that dominated them, while more people were in extreme poverty.
This phenomenon is similar to the common phenomenon in third world countries around the world at that time.
Those countries all bid farewell to colonial rule and gained independence after World War II, and they all ushered in dictators after independence. In the end, the Philippines could not escape this fate. They ushered in Marcos.
Marcos, like other dictators in the world at that time, set aside the local giant democracy, developed the army and used taxes to support his " winning alliance", and established his own interest group within the original interest group. .
Marcos did not change the huge gap between rich and poor. Instead, the Philippines almost became the country with the highest murder rate and the largest gap between rich and poor in the world.
In the capital Manila, there is a heavily guarded luxury residential area where Marcos and his partners divided their wealth. Next to the luxurious residences are slums for ordinary people. Even if people pass by a mansion, they are asked to show their ID.
Marcos's luxurious room, which was expanded during his silver wedding with his wife (1979).
Image source: malacanang.gov.ph
There were once dark clouds in Philippine politics.
In this context, the people and the powerful families have become allies and share the same hatred and hatred. Powerful families such as the Aquino family realize that if they want to protect themselves, they must embrace democracy and the rule of law. This may make the local tycoon system less popular, but at least it can ensure that there will be no more Marcos.
It was this transformation that finally drove away Marcos and saved the already scarred country.
The overthrow of Marcos relied on the support of powerful families, the public and international forces, all three of which played a key role.
Among the three, perhaps the least likely to appear is the powerful family, because if they want to support true democracy, they are harming themselves. Such a decision is not easy to make.
The Philippines without Marcos may still be far from being a good country, but it is definitely no longer in darkness. Among them, the Aquino family has made a huge contribution.
Before Aquino III, all the presidents of the Philippines came from major families. Four generations of the Aquino family have been involved in politics. This is not an isolated case, but a common phenomenon.
Aquino III’s predecessor, President Arroyo (Maria Macapagal-Arroyo), also came from a political family. Her father was the ninth president of the Philippines.
But after Aquino III, President Duterte is no longer a descendant of a traditional political family. His father is only the governor of eastern Mindanao, and he himself has no political halo. This change lies in Benigno Aquino Jr.’s defense of democracy and Corazon Aquino’s return to the rule of law.
In a sense, Aquino III continued the spirit of his parents and inherited their mantle.
03
Aquino III’s contributions
Aquino III has made three more prominent contributions to Philippine politics: one is the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the other is the economy, and the third is education.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is the largest anti-government armed force in the Philippines. It opposes the Philippine government for historical and religious reasons.
In 11521, Magellan came to the Philippines, and later had a dispute with the local indigenous people and died in the Philippines.
But then, groups of colonists followed Magellan. Spain soon occupied this place, which was during the reign of King Philip II of Spain (Philip II of Spain). This land was named the Philippines (Las Filipinas).
In 1598, Philip II's Spanish territory had Spanish colonies on almost every continent. The famous historian Fernand Braudel's "History of the Mediterranean" is a work on this period.
Image source: Wikipedia
Spain has colonized the Philippines for three hundred years. Today, 83% of Filipinos still believe in Catholicism.
But before Spanish colonization, the Philippines was influenced by Chinese culture, Indian culture and Islamic culture in ancient times, especially the influence of Islamic culture.
Islamic culture has ruled the Philippines for hundreds of years. This long influence has led to 5% of the population in the Philippines today believing in Islam.
Today, these 5% of Muslims in the Philippines almost all live in the southwestern part of the southern island of Mindanao (Mindanao), now called the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
The people living in this autonomous region are the Moro people (Moro, also known as the Bangsamoro people ). The Moros practiced the Sufi branch of Islam both before and after the arrival of the Spanish colonizers.
Islam in the Philippines is distributed on the island of Mindanao, and the rest are mainly Catholic. Among the islands in the Philippines, the largest is Luzon in the north. There are some smaller islands sandwiched between Luzon and Mindanao. The Philippines, like Indonesia, has the title of "The Country of a Thousand Islands".
Image source: Wikipedia
The Spanish did not completely conquer the Moros. Some Moros often resort to a suicide attack called "Juramentado " (Juramentado), in which they kill police or soldiers trying to conquer them and then commit suicide.
In 1898, the United States obtained the Philippines in a two-pronged approach by defeating Spain and paying Spain some money. The Philippines also became a free state of the United States and established a political system similar to that of the United States.
The Moros of the Sulu Islands in 1900.
Image source: Wikipedia
Later, during World War II, Japan occupied the Philippines, ended the previous First Philippine Republic, and established a puppet regime, the Second Philippine Republic.
During this period, the Moro people resisted the Americans and the Japanese, and always adhered to their land and beliefs.
It was not until the end of World War II that the United States approved the independence of the Philippines in 1946. The Philippines began to occupy the homeland of the Moros, hoping to establish a predominantly Catholic country.
Of course the Moros cannot agree. After all, the Moros have always been closer to Malaysia and Indonesia than to the Philippines, both geographically and religiously.
The red part is the Mindanao Autonomous Region that was voted on in 1987 and was later recognized by the Philippines. However, the Philippines still stationed troops here and had conflicts with the Moros. The yellow part was the part that was planned to be allocated to the Moros in 1976, but was later abandoned. As can be seen on the map, a series of small islands on the westernmost side of Mindanao are called the Sulu Islands, close to Malaysia. Historically, they were the same Kingdom of Sulu as eastern Malaysia.
Image source: Wikipedia
In 1960, the Philippines established the Commission for National Integration (CNI) in an attempt to reconcile Moorish customary law with Philippine law.
At this time, the Moro people became more aware of their national identity and began to form the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) to engage in armed struggle with the Philippine authorities.
At that time, the leader of the Moro National Liberation Front, Misuari (Nur Misuari), was well-educated and spread the enthusiasm for national consciousness among the Moro people, demanding the establishment of an independent nation-state.
The Philippines wants to establish an autonomous region for the Moros, and the Moros want a country. In the following years, the two parties sometimes clashed, sometimes made concessions to each other, and signed a series of peace agreements, but none of them could finally solve the problem.
During this period, the Moro National Liberation Front split and was replaced by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
In 1997, not long after the Philippine government and the Moros reached the "Comprehensive Cessation of Hostilities Agreement", the Philippine government launched a "total war" against the Moros, and the Moros immediately announced the start of a "jihad". After
, the conflict between the two parties became more serious than before. The conflicts that had been squeezed in the past had almost reached the point of being irresolvable. One step forward and the Moros may become independent from the Philippines.
It was not until the emergence of Aquino III that this issue came to light again.
Beginning in 2012, Aquino III worked hard to reach an agreement with the Moros to establish a truly autonomous political entity for the Moros to replace the failed Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
In order to reach an agreement, Aquino III used the role of the United Nations, ASEAN and other organizations, and communicated with the United States and other countries to convince the Moro people of the sincerity of the Philippine government.
In the agreement, Aquino III also made many concessions, such as the withdrawal of Philippine troops, restrictions on the Philippine government's power over the Moro people, and so on. In contrast, the "autonomy" promised to the Moros in the past was more of a declaration.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed an agreement in 2014. Aquino III is second from the right.
Image source: newsinfo.inquirer.net
Aquino III’s “Bangsamoro Framework Agreement” is regarded as a landmark agreement that may completely end the conflicts that have been entangled for decades.
Nearly ten years have passed, and the world has seen this change. The Philippines has become more tolerant and peaceful, and Aquino III is indispensable.
And this achievement of Aquino III is also the tradition of non-violent national self-determination that has been strongly supported from Rizal to his father Benigno Jr.
The "Bangsamoro Framework Agreement" is Aquino III's first and most important contribution to the Philippines.
Aquino III’s second contribution lies in the economy.
During the Aquino III era, the Philippines' GDP growth was both rapid and stable, which is quite rare in Philippine history: the GDP growth rate during the Aquino III administration maintained an average of 6% per year. This was an achievement not only in the Philippines, but also throughout Asia. Quite excellent.
Changes in the GDP growth rate of the Philippines from 1960 to 2020. The growth rate remained stable at 6% during the Aquino III period.
Image source: World Bank
Aquino III’s economic magic weapon mainly has three points:
The first is to fight corruption and improve the trust of the government;
The second is to use cheap labor to attract foreign-invested enterprises, improve manufacturing and promote employment;
The third is to develop rural areas Carry out reforms to increase farmers' income and agricultural harvests.
During the general election, Aquino III set the goal of "anti-corruption, poverty reduction, and reform". Almost every president has to play the anti-corruption card, but Aquino III's anti-corruption campaign still has significant economic effects, which in turn enhances people's trust in the government.
When Aquino III took office, the unemployment rate in the Philippines was as high as 8%, but it dropped steadily thereafter. By the time he left office in 2016, it had dropped to 6%. This achievement is even more remarkable when you consider that millions more young people are in need of employment during this period.
At the same time, the poverty population in the Philippines also decreased by nearly 5%.
The unemployment rate in the Philippines declined steadily during the Aquino III administration (2010-2016).
Image source: World Bank
The third contribution is in education : Aquino III introduced the "Enhancing Basic Education Law" (013).The bill introduces K-12 curriculum, which expands and consolidates education from kindergarten to secondary school.
For Philippine education, Aquino III is even more like the icing on the cake, because Philippine education has already led Asia - the Philippines had Asia's first university in 1611, and during the American colonial period, the Philippines already had the highest literacy rate in Asia nation.
Youth literacy rates in the Philippines continued to rise after the Aquino III administration.
Image source: Education Statistics
Aquino III’s contributions to Moro issues, economy and education gave him a good reputation in Philippine history. In addition, he is neither humble nor overbearing in diplomacy, and has received support from Filipinos and Western countries.
However, he is not perfect. He also had many stains during his time in power.
04
Endless Pursuit
Aquino III was criticized mainly for the Manila hostage incident and the Mamasapano incident.
The Manila hostage incident occurred in January 2015, when a dismissed former inspector hijacked a tour bus full of Hong Kong people in Manila ( the capital of the Philippines). Finally, after lengthy negotiations, the kidnappers were shot dead and 8 of the 15 hostages died.
During an interview, Aquino III smiled when talking about this matter, which caused dissatisfaction among the Filipino people and the international community. Later, he explained that the smile at that time was a smile when facing absurd things, not a happy one. smile.
But this incident still brought the relationship between Manila and Hong Kong to a freezing point.
The Mamasapano incident occurred in Bangsamoro, which had just entered peace in 2015. At that time, conflicts broke out between thousands of Moros and the special police who came to enforce the law, resulting in the deaths of 44 police officers and the deaths of at least 7 Moros.
This incident has cast a haze over Bangsamoro, which has entered the peace process, and also caused Aquino III's approval rating to drop below 40%.
Surveys on the public satisfaction rates of Aquino III and previous presidents show that even though Aquino III's support rate dropped in the later period, compared with previous presidents, the public is generally quite satisfied with Aquino III.
Image source: rappler.com
Overall, Aquino III had both merits and demerits for the Philippines, but in the long run, his tenure was a period of relative prosperity and stability for the Philippines. Before then, the Philippines was often known for being rife with violence, political corruption and economic depression.
Looking at the modern history of the Philippines, the first half of it had its glory during the colonial period and also had a certain democratic system.
After independence, the Philippines entered political decline under the Cold War. After 20 years of authoritarian rule, it became a hotbed of poverty and violence.
In the context of the gradual end of the Cold War, the Philippines has regained democracy and the rule of law and entered the 21st century relatively smoothly in a non-violent manner.
Although this is closely related to the changes in the world trend, it is also inseparable from the efforts of the Filipinos themselves. This includes both popular resistance and the efforts of local giants. The Aquino family has become the focus of the entire huge change, eye-catching and crucial.
From Aquino III, people may be able to see the beginning of long-term stability, and may be able to see the problems that still exist, but what the Philippines will become in the future has never depended on one person or a few people.
In any era, it is not easy to restrain fatal power. This requires a change in concepts and people's unremitting efforts.
History has proven many times that people’s fascination with power is endless.
But at the same time, people’s pursuit of freedom and order is also endless.
In contrast, Order and freedom will one day triumph over power.
The problem is how to reduce the damage in this process of victory, and how to ensure that the party that defeats power will not be swallowed up by power again.
This may require some key figures to put aside their personal desires and choose to do the right thing.
It is precisely based on this that Filipinos retain respect for Aquino III and the Aquino family.
