Asia-Pacific News
Philippines honours democracy icon Aquino one year after death
Aug 1, 2010, 6:57 GMT
Manila - The Philippines on Sunday marked the first death anniversary of democracy icon Corazon Aquino who led the country in toppling one of the world's most corrupt dictators.
President Benigno Aquino III joined thousands of Filipinos in a memorial mass for his mother, who died at 76 on August 1, 2009.
Hundreds more visited the cemetery where the former president was buried beside her husband, assassinated opposition senator Benigno Aquino Junior.
'I will continue this fight with your help,' her son said. 'The clamour of our people for change is so deep and so widely expressed that none of us cannot afford to be bystanders.
'Each of us has a duty to fulfill our social contract with the Filipino people by putting the interests of others before ourselves,' the president said.
Corazon Aquino was a housewife until the assassination of her husband in 1983, which galvanized the opposition against dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
She became president in 1986 after Marcos was overthrown by a popular insurrection.
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