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    3CL Sicat, Mark Bantiyan N. (PH History.-Corazon Aquino's Speech)

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    Sicat Mark Bantiyan
    Corazon Aquino gave a speech to the U.S. Congress in 1986 calling on America to help the Philippines preserve the democracy they had won and promote righteous governance. She justified her presence by connecting her late husband Ninoy's struggle to the nation's fate. While she succeeded in analyzing the failures of Marcos' martial law, her decision to honor the country's large foreign debt without ensuring benefits to the nation was questionable. She expressed great confidence in America to aid the Philippines, but this risks allowing foreign strategic interests to influence domestic affairs. The key lessons are that foreign powers cannot ensure true redemption and the only solution is addressing root economic and social causes of issues like the communist insurgency.

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    3CL Sicat, Mark Bantiyan N. (PH History.-Corazon Aquino's Speech)

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    Sicat Mark Bantiyan
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    Corazon Aquino gave a speech to the U.S. Congress in 1986 calling on America to help the Philippines preserve the democracy they had won and promote righteous governance. She justified her presence by connecting her late husband Ninoy's struggle to the nation's fate. While she succeeded in analyzing the failures of Marcos' martial law, her decision to honor the country's large foreign debt without ensuring benefits to the nation was questionable. She expressed great confidence in America to aid the Philippines, but this risks allowing foreign strategic interests to influence domestic affairs. The key lessons are that foreign powers cannot ensure true redemption and the only solution is addressing root economic and social causes of issues like the communist insurgency.

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    3CL SICAT, MARK BANTIYAN N. (PH HISTORY.-CORAZON AQUINO'S SPEECH)

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    Corazon Aquino gave a speech to the U.S. Congress in 1986 calling on America to help the Philippines preserve the democracy they had won and promote righteous governance. She justified her presence by connecting her late husband Ninoy's struggle to the nation's fate. While she succeeded in analyzing the failures of Marcos' martial law, her decision to honor the country's large foreign debt without ensuring benefits to the nation was questionable. She expressed great confidence in America to aid the Philippines, but this risks allowing foreign strategic interests to influence domestic affairs. The key lessons are that foreign powers cannot ensure true redemption and the only solution is addressing root economic and social causes of issues like the communist insurgency.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    112 views1 page

    3CL Sicat, Mark Bantiyan N. (PH History.-Corazon Aquino's Speech)

    Uploaded by

    Sicat Mark Bantiyan
    Corazon Aquino gave a speech to the U.S. Congress in 1986 calling on America to help the Philippines preserve the democracy they had won and promote righteous governance. She justified her presence by connecting her late husband Ninoy's struggle to the nation's fate. While she succeeded in analyzing the failures of Marcos' martial law, her decision to honor the country's large foreign debt without ensuring benefits to the nation was questionable. She expressed great confidence in America to aid the Philippines, but this risks allowing foreign strategic interests to influence domestic affairs. The key lessons are that foreign powers cannot ensure true redemption and the only solution is addressing root economic and social causes of issues like the communist insurgency.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    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.

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