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 figure of the said revolution, as the widow of the slain Marcos oppositionist and
former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino. Cory was hoisted as the antithesis of the
dictator. Her image as a mourning, widowed housewife who had always been in the
shadow if 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.
Questions:
1. Why was Cory Aquino functioned as the symbol of the restoration of
democracy and the overthrow of the Marcos Dictatorship in 1896? (7 pts.)
2. How was the overthrowing of the dictator done? What do you mean by
peaceful means? (8 pts.)
TThe 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 August 21, 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 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 Conjuangco 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.

3. What triggered the Filipinos to have People Power Revolution? (7 pts)

On September 18, 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 face by the new republic. She began her speech

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with the story of her leaving the United Stated three years prior as a newly widowed 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 August 23, 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 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 any barely any life in his body, he called off the fast on the 40 th
day.”

Ninoy’s death was the third and the last time that Cory and their children lost Ninoy.
She continued:

4. Why did Cory consider Ninoy’s death the third and the last time they lost
Ninoy? What was the first and the second? (5 pts.)

“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.”

5. “The dictator had called him a nobody. Yet, two million people threw aside their
passivity and fear and escorted him to his grave.” What do these statements
mean? (8 pts.)

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 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 democrative alternative” had “fallen on (her) shoulders.” Cory’s address introduced
us to her democratic philosophy, which he 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. 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

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while she did not relish the idea, she “will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity
and freedom of (her) country.

6. What do you mean by the underlined statements? (8 pts.)