3CL SICAT, MARK BANTIYAN N.

ASIA SECTION
 

Corazon Aquino’s Speech to the U.S. Congress

When Former President of the Philippines Corazon C. Aquino gave a speech to the United States
Congress on September 1986, she called on America to help the Philippines in preserving the freedom
which the Filipinos have won for themselves. Calling to, “restore democracy by the ways of democracy,”
she aggrandized the role of America in the world as the promoter of a righteous system of governance and
further strengthened the reputation of said country as a model for greatness. Cory’s speech was adorned
by countless references to her husband—Former Senator Ninoy Aquino—whom the Filipino nation had
assigned as the poster boy for anti-Marcos movements. Her speech even went so far as to connect
Ninoy’s struggle with that of the whole nation, all the while entwining their family’s history with the fate
of the entire country. She justified her presence in front of the U.S. Congress using figurative words and
metaphorical language, alluding to her connection with the late Ninoy on one hand and fulfilling her
mandate to the Filipino people on the other. She succeeded in her analysis of the Martial Law era
regarding its origin and outcome. Marcos’ attempt to stop a 500-strong communist insurgency by
imposing a restrictive policy only furthered the Red Army’s reach; in fact, it has been said that the
Communist Party had 16,000 members by the end of Martial Law, making Marcos the Party’s biggest
recruiter. President Cory said that the Martial Law was like, “trying to stifle a thing with the means by
which it grows,” acknowledging the fact that the communist insurgency existed because of widespread
economic inequality. She seems to have made a similar mistake, however, when she decided that the
Philippines would keep the $26 billion foreign debt it incurred during Marcos’ presidency. The reasoning
was that since we fought for honor, we should also honor the huge foreign debt, although its benefit never
really reached us as a nation. What is more questionable is that, after declaring that we will pay the debt,
she immediately asked for help in achieving that.
Cory Aquino appears to have the utmost confidence and trust in America that she invited the
country to help the Philippines in practicing and preserving its democracy. Looking at it from today’s
perspective, it seems like an open invitation for the former to aid the latter and subsequently use it for its
own strategic interests. We remember that the U.S. bases were evicted by a historic vote in 1991, during
Cory’s term, but such was the work of many nationalist senators who carried the lessons of Martial Law
into their of service.
Not much has changed since the speech of Cory Aquino to the U.S. Congress in 1986. There is
still no genuine economic and social transformation agenda which was mentioned in her speech. Thirty
years on, we still owe a huge amount of money to various lending institutions, and in fact, our debt has
grown ever larger and now includes not only foreign banks but also local ones. Furthermore, the
communist insurgency which Martial Law sought to terminate is continually spreading and deepening its
roots. This is no wonder since inequality is increasing at a steady rate; President Cory was right when she
said that the communist insurgency feeds on economic deterioration. The most important lesson we can
learn from the speech, I think, is that we cannot entrust our redemption to another sovereign state, and the
only real solution to any type of rebellion is to address the causes. Solving the root problem will
encourage everything else to inevitably fall into place.