Cory Aquino Icon of Democracy Essay Example For Students

Cory Aquino: Icon of Democracy Essay Cory Aquinos historic speech before the U. S. Congress Seven months after President Corazon C. Aquino was hurled to power by the will of the People, the US Government invited her to give a speech before the joint session of the United States Congress. Teddy Boy Locsin who was former Cory Aquino’s Executive Secretary during her administration, told the back-story of the said speaking engagement in a certain news program during Cory’s wake. He said that when Cory Aquino asked him to write the speech for her the instruction was â€Å"basta ikuwento mo lang kung ano nangyari sa akin at kay Ninoy, how Ninoy was imprisoned and assassinated and how I got elected.. simple lang, ikaw na bahala†. But it was not easy. Teddy Boy found it hard to start the speech and was quite unsatisfied in what he wrote which made it harder for him to end the speech. But as the date of the former President’s engagement got nearer, Locsin was not yet finished with the speech. For some reason according to him he can’t seem to finish it. Until Cory took the initiative of finishing the speech herself. Hours before the actual speech, an aide of the US congress offered the teleprompter (a device placed near or on a television camera that displays scrolling text, allowing a person to read a script while appearing to speak spontaneously to the camera) to Cory for her to get used to and help her with her delivery. Together with Teddy Boy and some US Secret Service assigned to them, Cory encoded the speech on the teleprompter in her hotel room. While Cory Aquino was practicing her speech, they saw the US Secret Service crying. The strange thing is according to Teddy Boy, the guards were trained to be emotionless, but for the reason they didn’t know, the guards were moved by Cory’s speech. When Cory asked Teddy Boy if the speech was okay, Teddy Boy said, â€Å"Mam, I Think this will do†. And true enough, even before Cory delivered her speech, the US Congress composed of representatives and senators gave her the longest standing ovation and applause for a foreign leader. During her speech, she was always interrupted by applause from the Senators and Congressmen. She became the first foreign leader to address a speech in the US Congress. The eloquent half-hour speech began and ended with standing ovations, and was interrupted by applause eleven times. It was, said House Speaker Tip ONeill, the finest speech Ive ever heard in my 34 years in Congress. Above the din of cheering officials, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole said to Mrs. Aquino, Cory, you hit a home run. Without missing a beat, Aquino smiled and replied: I hope the bases were loaded. Later that day, the U. S. House of Representatives voted to give the Philippines an assistance package of $200 million dollars. REACTION When she addressed the United States Congress after becoming President of the Philippines, in a speech so well written by Teddy Boy Locsin, for the first time in my life I became so proud to be Filipino. In the speech she represented a victorious and proud Philippines — they loved her, they loved us. I was not there at her time. I wasn’t there to witness a huge part of Philippines History, the time of despair and cruelty, but thanks to our technology, we, the younger generation could hear and watch it over and over again. Cory Aquino was indeed, more than any other, the real miracle of 1986, though she was a reluctant candidate. She was a housewife, totally unqualified for the position of President. She was a private person who was thrust into the limelight and was prevailed upon to run and become President by a country in desperate need of moral leadership. But then, the result of her actions, the peaceful end of a dictatorship and the return to democracy, which is often cited as miraculous was not what was surprising. It was the fact that there was, out of the blue, the woman in yellow who had the guts to stare down a dictator, the political will to resist injustice and cheating and the wisdom to test the people’s acceptance of her leadership. On the over-all, the Aquino administration made important gains in the aspects of bringing back democracy, restoring investor confidence in the economy and enacting legal and constitutional reforms. Despite these achievements, her presidency faced several threats and numerous problems— hungry opportunists who felt it was â€Å"their† turn and then there were the failed coup d’etat attempts. Before, the campaign then against her was to say she did not have experience in governance but the response was to say that Cory, the housewife, did not have experience in corruption and cheating. I suppose Cory Aquino’s life was a meaningful and remarkable one. She was a symbol of motherhood, simple, caring, responsible and always on guard for her children rendering into them to have the best of whatever life had to offer. In all her life she did her best in all of her roles — as wife, as mother, as president, as private citizen. I am hoping that her contributions to our country will live forever in our hearts. She will serve as our inspiration and her mournful death will be our lesson to think and be awakened especially this coming election, to choose the right leader for our country. We Filipinos should start moving before anything reaches the SOBRA NA stage. This is our tragic flaw that we act only when things are already too oppressive. We, Filipinos must work together because if we are united truth, honesty and goodness will prevail. Restoring Democracy by the Ways of Democracy Speech by President Corazon C. Aquino United States Congress – Joint Session September 18, 1986 In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him. By that brave and selfless act of giving honor, a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future found it 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 shut down the Congress that was much like this one before which I am honored to speak. Potlatch - The Sharing And Shaming EssayA 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 congressional elections. So within a year from a peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government. Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement. My predecessor set aside democracy so save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more 16,000. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with the means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody, in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines, doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local reintegration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the best intentioned among them fight. As President, I will not betray the cause 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 waver from the course laid down by your great liberator: â€Å"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the rights as God gives us to see the rights, 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. † Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country. Finally, may I turn to that other slavery: our $26 billion foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet must eh means by which we shall be able to do so be kept from us? Many conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it. And no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was visited on us has been extended. et ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the first and most difficult condition of the debt negotiation the full restoration of democracy and responsible government. Elsewhere, and in other times of more stringent world economic conditions, Marshall Plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy. When I met with President Reagan yesterday, we began an importa nt dialogue about cooperation and the strengthening of the friendship between out two countries. That meeting was both a confirmation and a new beginning and should lead to a positive results in all areas of common concern. Today, we face the aspiration of a people who had known so much poverty and massive unemployment for the past fourteen years and yet offered their lives for the abstraction of democracy. 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, although 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 work that would put dignity in their lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of a people so deserving of all these things. We face a communist insurgence that feeds on economic deterioration, even as we carry a great share of the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy, that they may serve as well as a redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner is one stone laid than two are taken away. Half of our export earnings, $2 billion out of $4 billion, which was all we could earn in the restrictive markets of the world, went to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received. Still, we fought for honor, and, if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to wring the payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil? Yet to all Americans, as the leader of 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 won it by themselves and need only help to preserve it. Three years ago, I said thank you, America, for haven from oppression, and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children, and the three years of lives together. Today, I say, join us, America, as we build a new home for democracy, another haven for the oppressed, so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nation’s commitment to freedom. 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.