CORAZON Aquino's life reads like the plot of three-hankie weepie with more twists than Gone With The Wind. But even a scriptwriter with the most vivid imagination might have thought twice before adding the latest development.
'Cory', wife of Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino, the maverick opposition leader to Ferdinand Marcos, was widowed in 1983 when he was murdered at Manila airport as he returned from exile in the US. Three years later she was elected president after the 'People's Power' movement toppled Marcos. And during her presidency, Cory faced six coup attempts and dealt with numerous natural calamities before leaving office at the end of her term in 1992.
Now, at a time when she might have hoped to spend a quiet retirement, devout Roman Catholic Cory is having to cope with a family scandal that has estranged her actress daughter Kris, the favourite of her five offspring and once her strongest political asset.
Kris, perhaps best-known in Hong Kong for co-starring with Raymond Wong Pak-ming in Happy Ghost V, in 1991, admitted last week that she was three months pregnant by actor Phillip Salvador, 45, a married man 20 years her senior who already has three children by his estranged wife and one by a former mistress.
While her manager Lolit Solis told the Manila press, 'she's so much in love, she's very happy with her condition,' Cory's spokeswoman Deedee Siytangco admitted mother and daughter 'have not been communicating with each other for over a month'.
Kris, nicknamed the 'Massacre Queen' for the type of movies she has appeared in of late, fell for Salvador earlier this year when they co-starred in a movie named Nandito Ako (I'm Here ).