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LESSON 6 (PART 2): Revisiting Corazon Aquino’s Speech Before the U.S.
Congress

Learning Outcomes:
1. Interpret the content and context of McCoy’s Philippine Cartoons of the American
Era and Corazon C. Aquino’s Speech Before the US Congress.

Concept Digest

Revisiting Corazon Aquino’s Speech Before the U.S. 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 vastestates 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.
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
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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 man fully 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
berigged. 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
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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 "immitted 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 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 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 "forcemay 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
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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."

Analysis of Cory Aquino's Speech

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 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
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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 the reconciliatory 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.
Sources:
1. Candelaria, J.L. et. al. (2018) Readings in Philippine History. Rex Book Store.
Manila.

2. History: Pallavi Talekau, Dr. Jyotrimayee Nayak, Dr.S.Harichan

3. Https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/colegio-de-dagupan/bsed-major-in-
english/revisiting-corazon-aquinos-speech-before-the-us-congress/19417855
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