Lesson 7 SPEECH OF PRESIDENT CORAZON C. AQUINO BEFORE THE JOINT SESSION OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, SEPTEMBER 18, 1986 Learning Outcomes At the end of this lesson, you should be able to: 1. Analyze the historical context and perspective of the document 2. Examine the content of the document 3. Relate the speech to the country’s current socio- economic and/or socio-political conditions Historical Context The gradual downfall of the dictatorial regime of President Ferdinand E. Marcos began with the assassination of his political rival, former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., on August 21, 1983 moments after the latter returned from exile in theUnited States. The murder of Ninoy Aquino set in motion a series of events that destabilized the Marcos administration. protest rallies erupted in the streets of Manila and other major cities in the provinces calling for Marcos to resign. The Philippine economy began to falter amidst accusations of corruption by Marcos and his cronies. Rumors continued to circulate that Marcos was sick. Following opinions by the U.S. government that he was losing the mandate of the Filipino people, Marcos announced on American and local television that he would hold a snap presidential election. The opposition wanted to field their own candidates against Marcos but soon realized that they would not stand a chance against the dictator if they would not unite and choose a common candidate. It was decided that Ninoy’s widow, Corazon Aquino, would run as president with opposition leader, Salvador Laurel, as her running mate. The snap elections proved to be a farce. There was rampant cheating and violence that resulted in numerous casualties. In the end, the Marcos’ allies at the Batasang Pambansa declared him the winner of the election. In protest, Aquino would for a nationwide boycott of products of businesses that supported Marcos. Other anti-Marcos groups vowed to continue the protests. But on February 22, Marcos’ defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces of the Philippines Vice-Chief of Staff, Gen. Fidel Ramos announced their defection from the Marcos government. This led to what is now known in our history as the four-day People Power Revolution where civilians faced tanks and soldiers to protect the soldiers and officers who defied the Marcos regime. Marcos eventually was flown to Hawaii where he lived in exile and Aquino was sworn into office as President of the Philippines. The People Power Revolution caught the imagination of the world. But there was a difficult task ahead. President ‘quino began to lead a country that had been badly damagedeconomically by the Marcos regime. In September 1986, she went on a state visit to the United States where she spoke befor, the U.S. Congress to ask for financial aid to the Philippines ang conferred with then President Ronald Reagan. She also met with American businessmen to convince them to invest in the Philippines. The nine-day visit was deemed a success by Filiping and American newsmen. About the Speaker Maria Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino was born on January 25, 1933 to a wealthy and politically prominent family in Tarlac. She graduated from Mount St. Vincent College in New York City in 1954. A year later, she married a popular young politician, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. She lived the life of a politician’s wife, remaining in the background and raising their family of five children while her husband’s career as a prominent opposition politician grew during the Marcos administration. Cory stood by her husband when he was arrested and imprisoned for eight years (1972-1980) by President Marcos after martial law was declared in 1972. Released to get medical treatment, Cory accompanied Ninoy to the United States where he lived in exile for three years. Corazon Aquino was thrust into the limelight when Ninoy was assassinated upon his return to the Philippines in 1983. She became part of the growing Opposition to the Marcos dictatorship which culminated in her presidential candidacy for a united opposition in the snap elections of 1986. Losing the elections because of massive cheating, Cory challenged the results of the election by calling for a boycott of all industries of Marcos cronies. It was not long before military officials publicly renounced Marcos and supported Cory as the duly-elected president. The four-day People Power Revolution in February 1986 ended the Marcos dictatorship and propelled Cory as che first Filipino woman president.The Cory administration became known for it: 7 : i . S Test . of philippine democracy. A new constitution was Weinetation 4 Congress was soon elected. But the euphoria of the : : ' newly. restored freedom did not last as the Aquino administration f, , to enforce social and economic reforms. The problems of — s of pe ten ang aspecially w Be 7 ‘ace and order especially with the communist insurgency contin d ue gnd it was not long before the government was also dealing with rightist elements in the military that led to several attempted coups: She was succeeded to the presidency by her former Armed forces Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos in 1992. In January 1987, Cory Aquino was named the TIME Magazine’s 1986 Person of the Year. She returned to the limelight in 2001 supporting the impeachment of President Joseph Estrada in what later became known as EDSA 2. In 2006, she was listed in the TIME Magazine’s issue called “60 YEARS OF ASIAN HEROES.” She died on August 1, 2009. |About the Speech The invitation to speak before the joint session of the U.S. ongress was extended to President Aquino seven months after he assumed office. The task of writing the speech was given toCory’s Executive Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin, Je who, in an interview years later, admitted that he was unable to finish it in time for the occasion. It was Cory who finisheg the draft and it was this speech that she delivered before the U.S. Congress. It ran for half an hour and was interrupted by several applauses and ended with a standing ovation by both the senators and congressmen. Speech of Her Excellency Corazon C. Aquino President of the Philippines Before the Joint Session of the United States Congress [Delivered at Washington, D.C. on September 18, 1986] Three years ago, I left America in grief to bury my husband, Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the president of a free people. In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him. By that brave and selfless act of giving honor, a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future found it ina faithless and brazen act of murder. So in giving, we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat, we snatched our victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom. For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times it our lives, was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator, and traitor to his oath, suspended the Constitution and shut down the Congress that was much like this one before which | am honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others—senatot publishers and anyone who had spoken up for the democrac as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not 4 body merely to be imprisoned but a spirit he must break. Foreven as the dictatorship demolished one by one the in, 7 0 democracy—the press, the Congress, the indepen ee vudiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights—Ninoy pei spirit alive in himself. i The government sought to break him by indignities and cin piel locked him up in a tiny, nearly airless cell i military camp the north. They stripped him naked and held the threat of sudden midnight execution over his head. Nino held wb manfully—all of it. I barely did as well. For 43 days, ie authorities would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt we had lost him. When that didn’t work, they put him on trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a military commission. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then, he felt, God intended him for another fate. We had lost bim again. For nothing would hold him back from his determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life in his body, he called off the fast on the fortieth day. God meant him for other things, he felt. He did not know that an early death would still be his fate, that only the timing was wrong. At any time during his long ordeal, Ninoy could have made a separate peace with the dictatorship, as so many of his countrymen had done. But the spirit of democracy that inheres in our race and animates this chamber could not be allowed to die. He held out, in the loneliness of his cell and the frustration of exile, the democratic alternative to the insatiable greed and ie cruelty of the right and the purging holocaust of the d more painfully than had to be after t his death was by which alone in a we lost him, irrevocably an the bse Me news came to us in Boston. It ™y count appiest years of our lives together. Bu Y's resurrection in the courage and faiththey could be free again. The dictator had called him a nobog, ; Two million people threw aside their passivity and escorted hin to his grave. And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, the Congress of the Uniteg States. The task had fallen on my shoulders to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms and by truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers of the opposition that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence I had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy, even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for democracy when it came. And then, also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship. The people vindicated me in an election shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The Opposition swept the elections, garnering a clear majority of the votes, even if they ended up, thanks to a corrupt Commission on Elections, with barely a third of the seats in parliament. Now, Last year, in an excess of arrogance, the dictatorship called for ats doom in a snap election. The people obliged. With over 4 million signatures, they drafted me to challenge the dictatorship. And I obliged them. The rest is the history that dramatically unfolded on your television screen and across the front pages of your newspapers, I knew our power.uy saw a nation, armed with courage and int democracy against threats and corrupti wore poll watchers break out in tears as armed 8OONS crash, the polling places to steal the ballots but, just the same, whapiial themselves to the ballot boxes. You saw a people so ca tiiniteag to the ways of democracy that they were prepared to give their its pale imitation. At the end of the day, before othe lives for wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced the people's victory. The distinguished co-chairman of the United States observer ream in bis report to your President described that victory: Yo fast by egrity, stand on. You saw «1 was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the Philippines.” Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards us. We, Filipinos, thank each of you for what you did: for balancing America’s strategic interest against human concerns, illuminates the American vision of the world. When a subservient parliament announced my opponent's victory, the people turned out in the streets and proclaimed me President. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails, that I assumed the presidency. 5 As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is es with my people and my commitment to God. He pa i Fe that the blood drawn with the lash shall not, in ms ‘ay Ps. baid by blood drawn by the sword but by the tearfu nciliation,a limited revolution, We have swept away absolute power by Filipino. Now that respected the life and freedom of every we are restoring full constitutional government. Again, as we restored democracy by the ways of democracy, SO are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent Constitutiona| draft which will be submitted latey this year to a popular referendum. When it is approved, there will be congressional elections. So within about a year from q peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government. Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small Commission is completing its achievement. My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than 16,000. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with the means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody, in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines, doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local reintegration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the best intentioned among them fight. As President, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet equally, and again no friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this, I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill out young soldiers, and threaten our new freedom. Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost for at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there, is the moral basis for laying down the olive branch of peace and taking up the swordar, Still, should it come to that, I will of sia laid down by your great liberator: ee with charity for all, with firmness in the right. ee to see the rights, let us finish the work we i Hs i. He ware nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have boone Pe and for his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish 4 just and lasting peace among ourselves jwith all nations. ie 70t waver from the With malice towards nd : Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy: Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, 1 will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country: Finally, may I turn to that other slavery: our $26 billion foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet must the pas by which we shall be able to do so be kept from us? Many conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it. And no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was visited on us has been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the first and most difficult conditions of the debt negotiation the full restoration of democracy and responsible government. Elsewhere, and in other times of more stringent world economic conditions, Marshall plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy. When I met with President Reagan yesterday, we began an ‘mportant dialogue about cooperation and the strengthening of the friendship between our two countries. That meeting was both a Fi faut bo m so 7 inning and should lead to positive esulte é d a new beginnin d sh Sults in all areas of common : Tod. tae ei ie face the aspirations of a people who had known Years and Overty and massive unemployment for the past 14 berever 1 offered their lives for the abstraction of democracy. Went in the campaign, slum area or impoverishedvillage, they came to me with one ery: democracy! Not foog arly needed it, but democracy. Not work, although they ¢| democracy. Not mong! although they surely wanted it, but for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn expect me to work a miracle that would instantly put food inty their mouths, clothes on their back, education 1" their children, and work that will put dignity in their lives. But I feel thy pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of a people so deserving of all these things. We face a communist insurgency that feeds on economic deterioration, even as we carry a great share of the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy, that may serve as well as q redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner is one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, $2 billion out of $4 billion, which was all we could earn in the restrictive markets of the world, went to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received. Still, we fought for honor, and, if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to wring the payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled up by the bondsman'’s two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil? Yet to all Americans, as the leader of a proud and free people, I address this question: has there been a greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people have gone through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it. Three years ago, I said thank you, America, for the havet Pe oppression, and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and of Toten ae for the three happiest years of our lives together » I say, join us, America, as we build a new home forz0cracy, another haven for the oppressed, so it may stand as ining testament of our two nation’s commitment to freedom. Relevance Though this would be one of many speeches that Cory Aquino would deliver as President of the Philippines, it was this speech that gave credence to the People Power Revolution not only to the Americans but to the world—that change was possible through peaceful means. When she finished her speech, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole said to Mrs. Aquino, “Cory, you hit a home run.” Aquino smiled back and said, “I hope the bases were loaded.” Five hours later, the House of Representatives voted, 203 to 197, in favor of $200 million as emergency aid for the Philippines.Analysis of Cory Aquino’s Speech An Cory Aquino’s speech was an important event in the diplomatic history of the country because it has arguably legitimacy of the EDSA government in the international arena. The speech talks of her family background, especially her relationship with her late husband, Ninoy Aquino. It is well known that it was Ninoy who served as the real leading figure of the opposition at that time. Indeed, Ninoy’s eloquence and charisma could very well compete with that of Marcos. In her speech, Cory talked at length about Ninoy’s toil and suffering at the hands of the dictatorship that he resisted. Even when she proceeded talking about her new government, she still went back to Ninoy’s legacies and lessons, Moreover, her attribution of the revolution to Ninoy’s death demonstrates not only Cory’s personal perception on the revolution, but since she was the president, it also represents what the dominant discourse was at that point in our history. Political and cemented the The ideology or the principles of the new democratic government can also be seen in the same speech. Aquino was able to draw the sharp contrast between her government and of her predecessor by expressing her commitment to a democratic constitution drafted by an independent commission. She claimed that such constitution upholds and adheres to the rights and liberty of the Filipino people. Cory also hoisted herselfas the reconciliatory agent after more than two decades of a polarizing authoritarian politics. For example, Cory saw the blown-up communist insurgency as a product of a repressive and corrupt government. Her response to this insurgency rooted from her diametric opposition of the dictator (i.e, initiating reintegration of communist rebels to the mainstream Philippine society). Cory claimed that her main approach to this problem was through peace and not through the sword of war. , Despite Cory’s efforts to hoist herself as the exact opposite of Marcos, her speech still revealed certain parallelisms between her and the Marcos’s government. This is seen in terms of continuing the alliance between the Philippines and the United States despite the known affinity between the said world super power and Marcos. The Aquino regime, as seen in Cory’s acceptance of the invitation to address the U.S. Congress and to the content of the speech, decided to build and continue with the alliance between the Philippines and the United States and effectively implemented an essentially similar foreign policy to that of the dictatorship. For example, Cory recognized that the large sum of foreign debts incurred by the Marcos regime never benefitted the Filipino people. Nevertheless, Cory expressed her intention to pay off those debts. Unknown to many Filipinos was the fact that there was a choice of waiving the said debt because those were the debt of the dictator and not of the country. Cory’s decision is an indicator of her government's intention to carry on a debt-driven economy. Reading through Aquino’s speech, we can already take cues, not just on Cory’s individual ideas and aspirations, but also the guiding principles and framework of the government that she represented.