Module 7 Assignment 1

The speech contains anti-Marcos propaganda as well as elements that

appeal for sympathy from the audience and pleas for support from the United
States. A from the harm that her predecessor is said to have caused. She used her
trip back to the Philippines to bury her late husband, former senator Benigno
Aquino Jr., who was slain at the Manila International Airport, to elicit sympathy
from her listeners. She started attempting to convince her American listeners that
she had become a grieving widow. (Her husband shouldn’t have returned after
getting the word from Marcos, who must have warned him. After recovering from
his heart surgery in Texas, he was supposed to return to the Philippines, but
instead he stayed for an additional two years. He even left the Philippines to meet
with anti-Marcos forces and accepted a fellowship at a university in the United
States. Regarding seeking assistance from the US, she noted the enormous
foreign debt and how she had started pleading for forgiveness from the
international lenders, particularly the IMF and World Bank. The next point was
that the United States spent a lot of money trying to hold democracy, but she
claimed that the Philippines is an improving democracy emerging out of the
nightmare of dictatorship (she claimed that the loans from foreign lenders went
to thieves and corrupt officers but provided no proofs). She appeared to be
suggesting that the United States should help the Philippines as it attempts to
reconstruct itself as a democracy. (How did that happen when she took power in
1986 and fired all legislators who had been elected and the local police officers?)