Gorospe, Jessica G.

BSBA 1A

Undelivered Speech of Ninoy Aquino – Commendation and Criticism

When Ninoy Aquino returned to the Philippines in August 21, 1983, he had been in exile in
the United States for the past three years. He had been temporarily released from his jail cell in
1980 so he could go to the US for an emergency heart bypass surgery, but never returned after
his surgery. In 1983, he had decided to come back so he can continue the struggle against the
Marcos regime. When his plane landed, he was immediately seized by military personnel and
then was assassinated on the stairs of the plane. He died on the scene with a bullet wound on the
back of his head.
Among his effects found after his death was a written speech that he was prepared to deliver
upon his successful arrival in the country. Sadly, he never had the chance to give the speech. The
speech is now available online for reading, and in his speech he began by saying these words:
“I have returned on my own free will to join the ranks of those struggling to restore our rights
and freedoms through nonviolence.”
Ninoy had always been gifted with the talent for words. He was a journalist before he was a
politician, and he knew how to deal with danger as shown when he was a young investigative
reporter who negotiated with the HUKBALAHAP leader to come down from the mountains. As
a politician, he was one of the sitting senators when Martial Law was declared and was
imprisoned because of his opposition to Marcos.
He began his speech with a declaration that he wanted to restore the rights and freedoms of
the Filipino people through nonviolence. In his following declarations, he said that he was “not
seeking confrontation” and simply wanted “reconciliation founded on justice”.
Some critics have used this statement to claim that Ninoy was giving in to Marcos. But that is
a very shortsighted interpretation of this sentence, when compared to the rest of the speech, also
because the sentence itself predicated reconciliation with the phrase “founded on justice”.
 The martial law years were years where there was no real justice for the common man.
Anybody who dared to question Marcos’ authority was immediately branded a communist, and
more often than not, were jailed or even executed. Ninoy wanted the country to step back from
the rule of Marcos, not the other way around. While Marcos was president, there was no real
justice because he was sitting as a president corruptly. In a real democracy, no president is
elected to serve for life. A democracy is not a monarchy.
He then recounted some of the reasons why he had decided to return. First, he said that he
stayed away for a time thinking that if he was not in the country, that the regime would become
more lenient and give back the lost freedoms, but that instead the country had “moved
backwards”. Killings have increased, the economy had worsened, and the human rights
situation had deteriorated, according to Ninoy. Therefore, he said he had decided to return so
that he can add his voice to those who are clamoring for the return of the lost freedoms that the
Martial Law years have taken away.
At the end of his speech, he defined the “terms” of his return, first among which was the
challenge to “Order my IMMEDIATE EXECUTION OR SET ME FREE”. This was in light of the
yet-unlifted death sentence given to him by the Military Tribunal allegedly for being the leader
of the communists in the country, even though he had never been a communist nor saw himself
as a communist. Sadly, this first item on his terms was preempted by his assassination. It
seemed that Marcos never wanted him to set foot back in the Philippines in the first place.
In his speech one of his reasons for returning was for the hope that his return could preempt
a violent revolution from happening, declaring that “in a revolution there can be no victors,
only victims.” Ninoy did not want violence, but he did not want tyranny either, adding that
“there can be no deal with a dictator. No compromise with Dictatorship.”
For Ninoy, it was clear that he saw Marcos’ regime as illegal and illegitimate, that his
declaration of Martial Law was an excuse so he can remain in power, and that his jailing
anybody who opposed him exposed the real aims of Martial Law, which was to silence all his
enemies so that he can remain in power.
Because of this, he knew that any deal with Marcos was not acceptable, because it would only
legitimize his position as “president”. Freedom must be given back to the people, but it must be
a freedom that has no colors of dictatorship, no taint of corruption, and therefore Marcos and
his cronies must step out of the picture.
I think young people like me should be learning more about the ideals of people like Ninoy
Aquino. Even now, there are critics of him accusing Ninoy of his own personal greed and lust for
power. But if I look closely, those critics are the same people who think Marcos was a good man,
and that Martial Law was a good time for the country. I am slowly learning the truth, but for me
and my generation, it is difficult because we are surrounded by social media and many times the
information we get from social media is not factual.
By reading his undelivered speech, I hear the voice of a leader who wanted to bring back
justice, and who was courageous enough to return to a place while not being guaranteed safety
by a regime that saw him as an enemy. I see a man that put his entire faith in God, and in his
countrymen. And in the end, he had to pay with his life, for the simple fact that he loved his
country, and his people, and because he was brave enough to stand up against a corrupt regime.