MANILA, Philippines, June 30 (UPI) -- New Philippines President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino promised to pursue ongoing peace talks with rebels and investigate corruption, including allegations against the former president.
Aquino, the 15th president of the Philippines, made his pledges for good governance at his swearing in ceremony Wednesday after winning victory in May elections when he took 42 percent of the vote and finished ahead of several other candidates, including former President Joseph Estrada (26 percent), Sen. Manny Villar (15 percent) and former Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro (11 percent).
Incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who served from January 2001 until Wednesday, was barred from running because of term limits.
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets in the capital Manila as Aquino was sworn in at the seaside Rizal Park amid showers of confetti thrown from helicopters.
"Today our dreams start to become a reality," Aquino said, speaking in Tagalog, a local language from the main island of Luzon and also the basis of the national Filipino language. "It's the end of a leadership that has long been insensitive to the suffering of the people."
His defeat of Arroyo ended 10 years of leadership that many believed was increasingly isolated from the average life of a Filipino.
Grievances against her administration were highlighted in February when police charged nearly 200 people, including an ally of Arroyo, with murder for their involvement in an apparent politically motivated roadside mass killing in November 2009.
It was the worst massacre in Philippines history and claimed more than 57 lives, including 32 local journalists and a pregnant woman. Among those indicted was former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., a close supporter of Arroyo in the last general election.
One of his sons had up to then been the sole person charged with the multiple killings. There is also suspected local police involvement in the massacre for which trials continue.
Arroyo has said she has nothing to hide and would cooperate, including with the new president's expected "truth commission" that will look into her affairs.
Aquino is the son of an assassinated opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, who was killed in 1983 at Manila Airport upon return from exile in the United States. He was believed killed by groups close to President Ferdinand Marcos.
Aquino's mother, Corazon, was proclaimed the 11th president, ousting Marcos in a popular uprising in 1986. The previous year she lost an election to Marcos but the results were overturned due to polling irregularities and suspected corruption.
During her rule, she stabilized democracy and curtailed presidential powers to avoid another Marcos-era dictatorship, including limiting the president to one 6-year term.
But improving the economy remained stubbornly out of reach until the end of her term in 1992.
The self-proclaimed housewife and "reluctant" president died, aged 76, from cancer in August.
Her son wasn't as reluctant and rode to election success partly on the back of sympathy for his mother, some of whose supporters organized a petition for the Roman Catholic Church to make her a saint.
Noynoy, which was also the affectionate name of his father, took up the fight to improve the economy and also stop tribal fighting that given rise to warlords and their more than 110 private militia terrorizing parts of the country, particularly on the southern island of Mindanao.
But peace, as elusive as a better economy, must include settling with the religious and communist insurgents such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
In March the Philippine National Police put six regions on "full-alert" status to head off any increase in separatist violence due to the elections. One of the regions was the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao an area noted for violence related to local politics.
Also last March, 11 soldiers and seven guerrillas died in gun battles with military security forces on one of many small islands making up the Sulu Island archipelago province in southwestern Philippines. The dead guerrillas were suspected members of the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group.
In December, clashes in the province of Bukidnon in north-central Mindanao island between the army and rebels left one soldier and nine communists of the New People's Army dead.
