Revisiting Corazon Aquino's Speech Before the U.S. Congress

AUTHORS: Candelaria, J. L. P., & Alporha, V. C. (2018). Readings in Philippine history. Quezon City: Rex Book Store, Inc. 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 in1986. 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 had always been in the shadow of her husband and relatives and had no experience in politics was juxtaposed against Marcos's 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 owned vast estates of sugar plantation and whose relatives occupy local and national government positions. The People Power Revolution of 1986 was widely recognized around the world for its peaceful character. When former senator Ninoy Aquino was shot at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport on 21 August 1983, the Marcos regime greatly suffered a crisis of legitimacy. Protests from different sectors frequented different areas in the country. Marcos's credibility in the international community also suffered. Paired with the looming economic crisis, Marcos had to do something to prove to his allies in the United States that he remained to be the democratically anointed leader of the country. He called for a Snap Election in February 1986, where Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the widow of the slain senator was convinced to run against Marcos. The canvassing was rigged to Marcos's favor but the people expressed their protests against the corrupt and authoritarian government. Leading military officials of the regime and Martial Law orchestrators themselves, Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel V. Ramos, plotted to take over the presidency, until civilians heeded the call of then Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin and other civilian leaders gathered in EDSA. The overwhelming presence of civilians in EDSA successfully turned a coup into a civilian demonstration. The thousands of people who gathered overthrew Ferdinand Marcos from the presidency after 21 years. On 18 September 1986, seven months since Cory became president, she went to the United States and spoke before the joint session of the U.S.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 21 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 by a military court, whose legitimacy Ninoy adamantly questioned. To 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 attributed 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 claimed 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 U.S. 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 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 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 had 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 had 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 Filipino people fulfilled the "most difficult condition of the debt negotiation," which was the "restoration of democracy and responsible government." Cory related to the U.S. legislators that wherever she went, she met poor and unemployed Filipinos willing to offer their lives for 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 tried building the new democracy. These were 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 would "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 U.S. Congress: "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 nations' commitment to freedom.'