What her mother was stopped by the Senate from doing, President Aquino has managed to do two decades later: Incorporate the Philippines into the United States’ global military strategy.

President Cory Aquino tried hard in 1991 to have a new treaty with the US allowing it to maintain its military bases, primarily that in Subic Bay that had been a strategic base of the US Pacific Fleet. The Senate, though, despite Aquino’s overwhelming popularity and political power at that time, rejected Cory’s demand, against which she even tried to undertake a mini-People Power street action.