FORMER PRESIDENT- CORAZON C. AQUINO- SPEECH
Just to share to you the Speech of former President Cory Aquino-
(President Corazon C. Aquino’s Historic Speech before the joint session of the United States Congress, Washington, D.C. - September 18, 1986)
Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Distinguished members of Congress.
Three years ago I left America in grief, to bury my husband Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also, to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the President of a free people.
In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future, founded in a faithless and brazen act of murder. So, in giving we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat we snatched our victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.
For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month, was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator and traitor to his oath, suspended the constitution and shutdown the Congress that was much like this one before which I’m honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others - Senators, publishers, and anyone who had spoken up for the democracy as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved.
The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not a body merely to be imprisoned but a spirit he must break. For even as the dictatorship demolished one-by-one; the institutions of democracy, the press, the congress, the independence of a judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights, Ninoy kept their spirit alive in himself.
....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 through aside their passivity and fear and escorted him to his grave.
And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, The Congress of the United States.
The task had fallen on my shoulders, to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms, and with truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy....
...Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards ours. We, the Filipinos thank each of you for what you did. For balancing America’s strategic interest against human concerns illuminates the American vision of the world. The co-chairman of the United States observer team, in his report to the President said, “I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon Aquino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the Philippines.”
When a subservient parliament announced my opponent’s victory, the people then turned out in the streets and proclaimed me the President of all the people. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails that I assumed the Presidency.
As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with a lash shall not in my country be paid by blood drawn by the sword but by the tearful joy of reconciliation. We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every Filipino.
Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. 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....
...As President among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet, equally and again, no friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this. I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers and threaten our new freedom.
Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost. For at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there is the moral basis for laying down the Olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war.
Still, should it come to that, I will not waiver from the course laid down by your great liberator.
“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds. To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and for his orphans to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
...Still we fought for honor and if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to ring the payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two-hundred fifty years of unrequitted toil. Yet, to all Americans, as the leader to a proud and free people, I address this question, “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.”
Three years ago I said, Thank you America for the haven from opression and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today I say, join us America as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the opressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.
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Truly, she will be remembered by the world, as a woman who liberated Filipinos from authoritarian rule.
May she rest in peace.
