UNIT 2 CONTENT AND CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY SOURCES

MODULE 5

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 n 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 vast estates
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 the 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 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. They solidify his protest, Ninoy
decided to do a hunger strike and fasted for 40 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:
''l 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 run 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 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
toll 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 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 the restoration of democracy. She invoked the path of peace because she
believed that it was the moral 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. Shelamented:

"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 commensuration 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 sewing 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 nations' commitment to freedom."