BENIGNO S. Aquino Jr. was born on November 27, 1932 in Concepcion, Tarlac. He was a popular politician, newspaperman, and considered a "martyr towards reconciliation." He was elected governor of Tarlac in 1961 and senator in 1967.
Ninoy became a political prisoner during martial law and was released only in 1980. He went to the US as a political exile. He was assassinated on his return on August 21,1983 at the Manila International Airport now renamed in his honor.
He had undergone open-heart surgery in 1980 and had been living with Cory and his children in Boston, Massachusetts. He was happy with them but was greatly disturbed by what was going on in the Philippines. President Ferdinand E. Marcos mismanaged the country.
There was government overspending. Unprecedented extent of graft and corruption was happening left and right. Marcos was even identified by Transparency International (a global corruption watchdog) as the second most corrupt head of state in the whole world in the past two decades. He was alleged to have embezzled an estimated five to ten billion US dollars.
Nepotism and cronyism (appointing his relatives and close friends to position of power in the government) were rampant. There were human rights violations, widespread poverty, social inequity, and rural stagnation. All these were compounded by rising criminality, agrarian unrest in Luzon, labor unrest, violent student activism and Negros was at the height of insurgency.
The most prominent of Marcos’ political rivals was Senator Benigno Aquino. He had built a "Superboy" reputation as a remarkable career. He quit his studies at the Ateneo de Manila to become a Manila Times reporter at 17. He was elected mayor of Concepcion at 22, governor of Tarlac at 30, and a senator of the Republic at 35.
Like Ninoy, the proclamation of Martial Law arrested 50,000 political opposition, the critical press, the militant students and the organized masses. More went underground. Some went to the hills. A few continued to fight on the surface under the mantle of cultural freedom. The rest of the cowards simply carried their balls.
Ferdinand and Imelda (Malakas and Maganda) and the military created the new oligarchs, the "nouveau burgis." That was the season when thieves became millionaires. Marcos could only reply, “What crisis? The economy is sounder than before. The people never had it so good.”
Ninoy left us his precious words, “We must teach our people to respond not merely to react. We must tell them to the point of being repetitious. We must criticize to be free because we are free only when we criticize.”