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SINGAPORE?The death of former President Corazon C. Aquino has generated renewed interest in the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that brought her to power and was beamed around the globe.
Satellite TV coverage of Aquino?s battle to avenge her husband?s assassination and restore democracy electrified the world and generated support for her cause.
Dramatic images of the slight widow in a yellow dress leading millions of her countrymen against the corrupt dictator Ferdinand Marcos also helped inspire nonviolent democratic movements across the world, according to observers.
?I think that what happened in the Philippines is not being given enough credit for the overthrow of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world like in Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Union itself and elsewhere in Asia,? said leading Asian scholar Rodolfo Severino.
?People seem to forget that this wave of enlarged freedoms was really pioneered by the Philippines,? said Severino, a former diplomat and secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
CNN was just three years old when Cory Aquino, who died on Saturday after a battle with cancer, was thrust onto the world stage by the murder of her politician husband Benigno ?Ninoy? Aquino on Aug. 21, 1983, at the Manila International Airport as he was being escorted off a plane by soldiers.
Satellite dishes
Within months, US, Japanese and European television networks established a permanent presence in Metro Manila and satellite dishes began sprouting on the roof of the historic Manila Hotel.
The opposition leader?s widow, who returned from the United States to bury her husband still dressed in the bloodied white safari suit he wore when he was shot, became the darling of the international media. Marcos was depicted as the villain.
The liberal use of Roman Catholic symbols such as the crucifix and images of the Virgin Mary by the pro-Aquino forces made for great TV footage as protests rocked key cities.
Fatal mistake
Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for two decades, made a fatal mistake when he called a snap presidential election in February 1986. A reluctant Aquino was persuaded to run against the man she held responsible for her husband?s death.
When both sides claimed victory, a military mutiny ballooned into a full-blown rebellion against Marcos.
Aquino supporters including nuns, children and grandmothers faced off against Marcos? soldiers, who were paralyzed into inaction when confronted by flowers, rosaries?and the presence of foreign media.
Within days, Marcos and his coterie fled to the United States after it became clear that international opinion?and diplomatic recognition?had swung in favor of a revolutionary government led by Aquino.
Template of avenging daughter
Aquino was famous as a democracy icon years before the world came to know of Aung San Suu Kyi?s struggle in Burma (Myanmar) and witnessed images of the anonymous Chinese individual standing defiantly before a tank near Tiananmen Square.
?She was the template for the avenging daughter which we saw in Pakistan and Burma. Secondly, she highlighted the importance of women to democratization,? said Bruce Gilley, an assistant professor of political science at Portland State University who specializes in Asian politics.
?Few countries democratize successfully without having a woman or women included in the democratic leadership. Women represent a break with the patriarchal traditions associated with authoritarian rule. That?s why they are so often at the head of democracy movements,? he said.
Democratic fever
The EDSA People Power Revolution?s impact reached well beyond Asia.
In the late 1980s, democratic fever swept across Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union disintegrated. In Czechoslovakia, the ?Velvet Revolution? swept dissident writer Vaclav Havel to the presidency.
Havel himself has publicly cited the Philippines? example as an inspiration for democratic movements worldwide.
