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 antithes 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 Marco’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 throuhghout 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 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 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 protest 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 civillians heeded the call of then Manila Archibishop Jaime Cardinal Sin
and other civilian leaders gathered in EDSA. The overwhelming presence of 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 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 resolved 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 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 north. They stripped him naked and held a treat 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 military court , whose legitimacy Ninoy adamantly
questioned. To solidify his protest, Ninoy decided to do 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 trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a
military commission. Ninoy challenged its authorityand 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 the 40th days” 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 passitivity 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 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 eletions, garnering a
clear majority of the votes even if they ended up (thanks to a corrupt Commission on Election) with
barely a third of a 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 ut most 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 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 a 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 upheavel that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have to full constitutional
government.”
Cory then proceed 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, tat insurgency had grown to more than seixteen 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 progrom 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. Neverltheless, 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 understand 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 intentiom to
honor those debts despite mentioning that the people did not benefiot from such debts. Thus, she
mentioned her protestation 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 pf 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 atlthough 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 fell the pressing
obligation to respond quickly as the leader of the people so deserving all these things.”

Cory proceed 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 thinking America for serving as home to her family fopr what she refreed to
as the “ three happiest years of our lives together.” She enjoined America in building the Philippines as
a new home for democracy an in turning the country as a “shining testament of our two nation.”
Commitment to freedom.”
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 could very well complete with that of Marcos. In
her speech, Cory talked at length about Ninoy’s toil and suffering of the hands of the dictatorship that
he resisted. Even when she proceeded talking about her new government, she still with back to Ninoy’s
legacies and lesssons. Moreover her attribution of the revolution to Ninoy’s death demonstrate not only
Cory’s personal perception on the revolution, but since she was the president, it also represents what
the dominant discourse was at the point in our history.

The ideology or the principles of the new democratic government can be also 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 as the reconciliatory agent after more than two decades at a polarizing authoritarian
politics. For example, Cory saw the blown up communist insurgence as a product of a repressive and
corrupt government. Her response to this insurgency rooted from her diametric opposition of the
dictator (i.e., society). Cory claimed that her main approach to this problem was through peace and not
through the sword of war. Despite Cory’s effort, to hoist herself as the exact opposite of Marcos, her
speech still revealed certain parallelism between her and the Marcos government. This is seen in terms
of continuing the alliance between the Philippines and the United States 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 U.S. Congress and to the content of the speech, decided to build and
continue with the alliance between the Philippines and the United States and effectively implemented
and 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 been benefited the Filipino people.
Nevertheless, Cory expressed her intention to pay of those debts. Unknown to many people was the
facts that there was a choice of waving 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 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 inspiration but also the guiding principles and framework of the government that she represented.