Name: Cortez, Faith Ann BSMT 1

Revisiting Corazon Aquino's Speech before the US Congress

Corazon "Cory" Cojuangco Aquino functioned as the symbol of the

restoration of democracy and the overthrow of the Marcos Dictatorship in 1986.
The EDSA People Power, which installed Cory Aquino in the presidency, put the
Philippines in the international spotlight for overthrowing a dictator through
peaceful means. Cory was easily a figure of the said revolution, as the
widow of the slain Marcos oppositionist and former Senator Benigno "Ninoy
Aquino Jr. Cory was hoisted as the antithesis of the dictator. Her image as a
mourning, widowed housewife who has always been in the shadow of
her husband and relatives and had no experience in politics was juxtaposed
against Marcos statesmanship, eloquence, charisma, and cunning political skills.
Nevertheless, Cory was able to capture the imagination of the people whose
rights and freedom had long been compromised throughout the Marcos regime.
This is despite the fact that Cory came from a rich haciendero family in Tarlac and
has owned vaste states of sugar plantation and whose relatives occupy local and
national government positions. On 18 September 1986, seven months since Cory
became president, she went to the United States and spoke before the joint
session of the US Congress. Cory was welcomed with long applause as she took
the podium and addressed the United States about her presidency and the
challenges faced by the new republic. She began her speech with the story of her
leaving the United States three years prior as a newly widowed wife of Ninoy
Aquino.
On 18 September 1986, seven months since Cory became president, she
went to the United States and spoke before the joint session of the US Congress.
Cory was welcomed with long applause as she took the podium and addressed
the United States about her presidency and the challenges faced by the new
republic. She began her speech with the story of her leaving the United States
three years prior as a newly widowed wife of Ninoy Aquino.
 She then told of Ninoy's character, conviction, and resolve in
opposing the authoritarianism of Marcos. She talked of the three times that they
lost Ninoy including his demise on 23 August 1983. The first time was when the
dictatorship detained Ninoy with other dissenters. Cory related: The government
sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly
airless cell in a military camp in the north. They stripped him naked and held a
threat of a sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully
under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three days, the authorities would not
tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt
we had lost him." Cory continued that when Ninoy survived that first detention,
he was then charged of subversion, murder, and other crimes. He was tried for
buying a military court, whose legitimacy Ninoy adamantly questioned. To solidify
his protest, Ninoy decided to do a hunger strike and fasted for40 days. Cory
treated this event as the second time that their family lost Ninoy She said: "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
him 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 40th day. Ninoy's death
was the third and the last time that Cory and their children lost Ninoy. She
continued: "And then, we lost him irrevocably and more painfully than in the past.
The news came to us in Boston. It had to be after the three happiest years of our
lives together. But his death was my country's resurrection and the courage and
faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called him a
nobody. Yet, two million people threw aside their passivity and fear and escorted
him to his grave."
Cory attributes the peaceful EDSA revolution to the martyrdom of Ninoy.
She stated that the death of Ninoy sparked the revolution and the responsibility
of "offering the democratic alternative" had "fallen on (her) shoulders." Cory's
address introduced us to her democratic philosophy. which she claims she also
acquired from Ninoy. She argued: “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, I knew our power".
Cory talked about her miraculous victory through the people's struggle and
continued talking about her earliest initiatives as the president of a restored
democracy. She stated that she intended to forge and draw reconciliation
after a bloody and polarizing dictatorship. Cory emphasized the importance
of the EDSA revolution in terms of being a "limited revolution that respected the
life and freedom of every Filipino." She also boasted of the restoration of a fully
constitutional government whose constitution gave utmost respect to the Bill of
Rights. She reported to the US congress: “Again as we restore 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 constitutional commission is completing its
draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum. When it is
approved, there will be elections for both national and local positions. So, within
about a year from a peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a
dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government."
Cory then proceeded on her peace agenda with the existing communist
insurgency, aggravated by the dictatorial and authoritarian measure of Ferdinand
Marcos. She asserted: “My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from
a communist insurgency that numbered less than five hundred. Unhampered
by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he
fled, that insurgency had grown to more than sixteen thousand. I think there is a
lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it
grows.”
 Cory's peace agenda involves political initiatives and re-integration program
to persuade insurgents to leave the countryside and return to the mainstream
society to participate in there storation of democracy. She invoked the path of
peace because she believed that it was the moral path that a moral government
must take. Nevertheless, Cory took a step back when she said that while peace is
the priority of her presidency, she "will not waiver when the freedom and
democracy are threatened. She said that. similar to Abraham Lincoln, she
understands that "force may be necessary before mercy" and while she did not
relish the idea, she "will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom
of (her) country."
Cory then turned to the controversial topic of the Philippine foreign debt
amounting to $26 billion at the time of her speech. This debt has ballooned during
the Marcos regime. Cory expressed her intention to honor those debts despite
mentioning that the people did not benefit from such debts. Thus she
mentioned her protestations about the way the Philippines was deprived
of choices to pay those debts within the capacity of the Filipino people. She
lamented: “Finally may I turn to that other slavery, our twenty-six billion dollar
foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet, the means by which we shall
be able to do so are kept from us. Many of the conditions imposed on the
previous government that stole this debt, continue to be imposed on us who
never benefited from it”.
She continued that while the country has experienced the calamities
brought about by the corrupt dictatorship of Marcos, no commensurate
assistance was yet to be extended to the Philippines. She even remarked
that given the peaceful character of EDSA People Power Revolution, ours
must have been the cheapest revolution ever." She demonstrated that
the Filipino people fulfilled the "most difficult condition of the debt the
negotiation," which was the "restoration of democracy and responsible
government."
Cory related to the US legislators that wherever she went, she met
poor and unemployed Filipinos willing to offer their lives to democracy. She
stated: “Wherever I went in the campaign, slum area or impoverished village.
They came to me with one cry, democracy. Not food although they clearly needed
it but democracy. Not work, although they surely wanted it but democracy. Not
money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn’t expect me
to work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their
back, education in their children and give them work that will put dignity in their
lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of the
people so deserving of all these things."
Cory proceeded in enumerating the challenges of the Filipino people as
they try building the new democracy. These are the persisting communist
insurgency and the economic deterioration. Cory further lamented that these
problems worsened by the crippling debt because half of the country's export
earnings amounting to $2 billion will "go to pay just the interest on a debt whose
benefit the Filipino people never received." Cory then asked a rather compelling
question to the US: "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 want it by themselves and need
only the help to preserve it." Cory ended her speech by thanking America for
serving as home to her family for what she referred to as the "three happiest
years of our lives together." She enjoined America in building the Philippines as a
new home for democracy and in turning the country as a "shining testament of
our two nation’s commitment to freedom.”

ANALYSIS:
 Cory Aquino's speech was an important event in the political and
diplomatic history of the country because it has arguably cemented the
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 can very well compete with that of
Marcos. In her speech, Cory talked at 1 length about Ninov's toil and
suffering at the hands of the dictatorship that he resisted. Even
when she proceeded talking about her new government, she still
 goes 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.
 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 claims that such constitution upholds and adheres to the
rights and liberty of the Filipino people. Cory also hoisted herself as there
conciliatory agent after more than two decades of a polarizing authoritarian
politics. For example, Cory sees the blown up communist insurgency as a
product of a repressive and corrupt government. Her response to
this insurgency roots from her diametric opposition of the dictator
(i.e., initiating reintegration of communist rebels to the mainstream
Philippine society). Cory claims that her main approach to this problem is
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
government. This is seen in terms of continuing the alliance between the
Philippines and the US, 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 US Congress and to the content of the
speech, decided to build and continue with the alliance between the
Philippines and the US 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 represents.