Posted on
June 16, 2010 by
kankan
Photo by: Jay Morales and CNN Talk Asia
This week’s Talk Asia gets a unique insight into Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino and his family’s political legacy. CNN’s Arwa Damon travels to Tarlac to meet the Philippines’ President-elect at his family’s estate.
24 years after his mother became President, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino is set to be sworn in to office on June 30, almost a month after the country’s general election. Winning the presidential election by a landslide, Aquino has promised his people change: “It seems that for such a long time you’ve been told to persevere and forbear, and to just tolerate the system when you don’t have to. Let us be your instruments in affecting these changes… We are the public servants, you are the public, you are the masters, you are the ones who have the decisions, wants and needs that should be respected and delivered, and we will bring it back to that point.”
The President-elect also vows to improve the livelihood of his countrymen by leveling the playing field: “You want to give everybody the opportunity to really advance their status in life. You want
to give them the opportunities to improve their luck, and that is basically getting back government ability, to affect all of these – transforming these potentials into actualities.”
Nicknamed “Noynoy”, Aquino’s father Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was assassinated in 1983 when he returned from exile to lead opposition to then President, Ferdinand Marcos. His mother, Corazon Aquino, later took over the leadership of her husband’s movement and became the country’s first female President in 1986.
After more than two decades, Aquino still has vivid memories of the moment he heard of his father’s assassination: “I was in Boston…I was watching CNN and I don’t remember the name of the announcer right now, but he pronounced my father’s name incorrectly. Of course there was no videos or anything at that point, and he just said ‘opposition leader Benigno Aquino’…it was really an experience…you couldn’t be defined in either time or space at that point in time. I guess that’s what shock is.”
Yet the 50-year-old claims that he holds no grudges against the Marcos family, even if the former President’s children are now running for power. “I think I’m in the same boat as they are. We are all victims of the rule of their parents, and the only difference is that I recognize it and they don’t. So long as what they do aspire for is for the betterment of the people, I can support them. But if they ever decide to go back to that tragedy of the martial law, then they can count on being opposed from the first second that they embark on that route.”
Aquino also shares with Damon what drove him to run for President: “It was a choice of being comfortable personally as opposed to performing one’s duty, and then the end question was if things become worse, can I face myself in the mirror and say I could have done something but I chose not to and say I’m okay with that? I don’t think I could.” The Philippines President-elect also takes Damon on a rare, guided tour of the Aquino Center – which houses memorabilia of the Aquino family including a replica of the prison cell his father was locked in for more than seven years.
Aquino’s interview can be watched online after its first airing at www.cnn.com/talkasia.
For more information, please visit www.CNNPressroomAsia.com.
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This week’s Talk Asia gets a unique insight into Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino and his family’s political legacy. CNN’s Arwa Damon travels to Tarlac to meet the Philippines’ President-elect at his family’s estate.
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