A report on Ferdinand Marcos, Assassination of Ninoy Aquino, 1986 Philippine presidential election and Imelda Marcos

A longtime political opponent of President Ferdinand Marcos, Aquino had just landed in his home country after three years of self-imposed exile in the United States when he was shot in the head while being escorted from an aircraft to a vehicle that was waiting to transport him to prison.

She is the widow of former president Ferdinand Marcos and the mother of current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

After being dared by an American journalist, President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared a snap election during an interview on the American Broadcasting Company political affairs programme, This Week with David Brinkley in November 1985.

In 1980, he had a heart attack in prison and was allowed to leave the country two months later by Marcos' wife, Imelda.

The assassination of Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. on August 21, 1983, revived the oppositionist press, and not far behind it did the pro-Marcos press retaliate.

It is also credited with thrusting Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino, into the public spotlight and her running for president in the 1986 snap election.

After being elected for a third term in the 1981 Philippine presidential election, Marcos's popularity suffered greatly, due to the economic collapse that began in early 1983 and the public outrage over the assassination of opposition leader Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. later that year.

This discontent, the resulting resurgence of the opposition in the 1984 Philippine parliamentary election, and the discovery of documents exposing his financial accounts and false war records led Marcos to call the snap election of 1986.

There had been incessant speculations of Philippine "capital flight" that not only involved Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos themselves, but also government officials and friends of the first family.

His wife, Imelda Marcos, made infamous in her own right by the excesses that characterized her and her husband's conjugal dictatorship, is the source of the term "Imeldific".

Aquino returned to the Philippines on August 21, 1983, and was assassinated at the Manila International Airport upon his arrival.

On February 7, 1986, snap elections were held between Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino, the widow of Benigno Aquino Jr. Despite Ferdinand Marcos claiming to have won the election, allegations of vote rigging led to mass protests, later known as the People Power Revolution.