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By reviving the promise of democracy without bloodshed, all too rare in the past, the Philippine revolution also held up a candle of hope in some of the world's darker corners. Moderate South Africans, for example, could take some heart from the success of civil disobedience; nor could they fail to note the victory of a woman who was once her jailed husband's ambassador to the world, much as Winnie Mandela works in the name of her imprisoned husband Nelson. In overthrowing Marcos, moreover, Aquino helped erase a whole volume of shibboleths. She showed that politics could be the art of the impossible; that force could speak softly and carry a small stick; that religion could be not % the opium but the stimulant of the masses; that nice guys, whatever their gender, sometimes finish first.
Aquino's triumph inspired many overhasty and wishful predictions of sequels in Chile, South Korea or Pakistan to the Philippines' "People Power." None of those countries, however, suffer under the conditions that ruled in the House of Marcos. Their economies are not in shambles, their corruption is far from exorbitant, their armies remain unshakably loyal to their military leaders. The U.S., moreover, has shown no sign of wishing to help push their strongmen out the door.
Yet the symbol remains. After watching the smiling shots seen 'round the world, no dictator can sleep quite so easily. And dissidents everywhere now have a stirring precedent and talisman to invoke. Says Congressman Stephen Solarz, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs: "I have found that from Poland to Pakistan and from South Korea to South Africa, those who are committed to democracy see in Aquino a sense of enduring inspiration. She is probably the most popular head of state in the world today."
Inevitably, the fairy-tale nature of Aquino's sudden ascension prompted some extravagant mythmaking. To some the woman in yellow seemed a Joan of Arc, a religious figure incarnating her people's hopes as she led them to freedom; to others she was a Cinderella, with one glass slipper instead of Imelda's 3,000 pairs of shoes. Indeed, as startling as it may seem in the secular West, millions of devout Filipinos viewed Aquino as a sort of Blessed Mother, a redeemer who came to resolve the passion play that had begun with her husband's death.
Yet the real world does not lend itself to fable for long. After the revolution comes the Realpolitik, and happy-ever-afters soon dissolve. The day after her victory, Aquino found herself in charge of one of the world's most desperate countries, saddled with a foreign debt of $27 billion, 20,000 armed Communist guerrillas and a pile of government institutions that bore her predecessors' monogram.