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Aquino was both. The scion of a prominent family, he seemed destined for the presidency of his country. At age 22, he was the youngest mayor in the Philippines. At 29, he was its youngest Governor and at 34, its youngest Senator. By his 40th year, in 1972, Aquino was the clear front runner to succeed Marcos, who was finishing his second term under the old, democratic constitution and could not run again.
Then Marcos declared martial law, extending his rule by decree, and began jailing his political opponents, starting with the man widely known as "the boy wonder from Tarlac." Aquino was convicted of murder, rape, illegal possession of firearms and "subversion," charges few took seriously, and sentenced to die. He spent lYi years in prison, maintaining a complex love-hate relationship with Marcos (see box). In 1978, while in solitary confinement, Aquino very nearly defeated the President's wife Imelda in an election for the National Assembly.
Aquino's imprisonment ended in 1980, when, amid pleas from the Carter Administration, he was allowed to go to the U.S. for heart surgery. He remained for three years, settling with his wife Corazon and their five children near Boston, where he took up research fellowships at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During his stay in the U.S., Aquino freely granted interviews, testified before congressional committees, and kept in touch with exile opposition groups. Gradually, the yen to return grew stronger, and last spring he began openly discussing the possibility of going home. That, in turn, prompted a special meeting with Imelda Marcos in New York City last May. Alternately pleading, threatening and cajoling, Imelda pressed Aquino to stay where he was, warning him that his life would be in danger in Manila. "Ninoy, there are people loyal to us who cannot be controlled," she reportedly said.
Aquino persisted. Remaining in exile, he believed, would mean allowing events in the Philippines to pass him by. The Philippine consulate in New York refused to issue passports to his family, however, prompting an exchange of public statements across the Pacific. Aquino stood on his right as a Philippine citizen to return home. The government reiterated the old subversion charges against him and maintained that it could not guarantee his safety, claiming that assassins were waiting for him. At times, Marcos seemed almost irrationally determined to keep him out, and Aquino was just as irrationally determined to return. When Aquino announced that he would be arriving in Manila aboard a Japan Air Lines flight on Aug. 7, the government threatened to revoke the landing rights of any carrier bringing in undocumented passengers. JAL backed out, and Aquino's homecoming was delayed.