Ravating Corazon Aquino': Speech Before the U.S.

Corason Cory' Cajuangro Asquino funtionad as the symbol of tha

restoratiOn al demperany and the overthrow of the Marcos Dictatorship i
Jest. The RIDS A POOpie Pomer, which installed Cory Aquino in the presideng,
parthe Ph tippines in the international spotlight for overthrowing a dictato,
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"
Jr. Cor was hoisted as the antithesis of the dictator. Her image
as a mourning. widowed housewife who had always been in the shadow
her hushand and relatives and had no experience in politics was juxtapoger
against Marone'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 Marco,
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 relative-
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 presideney after 21 vears

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
Ninov 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. hev 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 davs,. the authorities would not tell me what
had happened to him.
This was the frst time mv children and
I felt we had lost him.
Corv continued that when Nino survived that hrst detention, he was
then charged of subversion, murder, and other crimes. He was tried by a
military court. whose legitimacu Ninov adamantlv questioned. "To solidifv
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 Ninov. 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.
Ninov challenged its authoritv and went on a fast If ha
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.'

Nino's death was the third and the last time that Cory and the;
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 tear 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 democracv 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 dietated 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
Dower
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 vear from
peaceful but national upheaval
that overturned a dictatorship. we shall have returned to tull
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 trom a
communist insurgencv 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 countrvside 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 i
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 democracv 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
stared
"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 treedom
Analysis of Cory Aquino's Speech
Cory Aquino's speech was an important event in the political and
diplomatie 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 could very well compete with that of Marcos. In her
speech, Cory talked at length about Ninoy's toil and suffering at the hands
of the dictatorship that he resisted. Even when she proceeded talking about
her new government, she still went 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 claimed that such constitution upholds and adheres
to the rights and liberty of the Filipino people. Cory also hoisted herself