Corazon Aquino

“ To Make Democracy Work
My mandate was not just to make a country rich, but to make democracy work: To make it work as a system of genu­ine popular participation. To make it meaningful to the lives of the common people by giving them jobs and justice, work with dignity, health and education, and reason to hope that the future will be better for themselves and their children. ”

“ We have come to regard the scope of reform not as a problem, but as a challenge, as necessary as it is ambitious; and as realizable as the strength of our commitment allows.
The second basic feature is its reliance on the private sector to carry the main burden of growth. We have re­affirmed our faith in private initiative to propel and sustain our economy. Our premise is that, for as long as free market forces dictate the dynamics of the business environment, the private sector will respond aggressively. As a corollary, the program defines and limits government’s participation in the economy. ”

“ No soldier has the right to combine with his comrades to campaign for a person or party and deliver to them a block of the military vote. No member of the military shall lend his name, prestige, and the influence of his position to anyone’s campaign. The same holds true for the police.
The military has earned the people’s trust as the spearhead of their liberation and the constant defender of their democracy. To these honors it is my aim to add the distinction of shepherding our democracy through its first political succession, by clean and peaceful elections. ”

“ I wish to assure you and the rest of our countrymen that I shall never be intimidated; there shall be no rest from my work until the task is completed.
But our success would not be possible without unity among us. I therefore ask you, Honorable Senators and Representatives of this our people’s Congress, and the rest of our leaders, to renew with me our commitment to the dream that bound us together in 1986: Democracy, freedom, sovereignty, economic growth, social justice.
Let us join hands with our people as we undertake the task of rebuilding, and as we resume our march towards our goals. ”

“ We were exiles in our land — we, Filipinos, who are at home only in freedom — when Marcos destroyed the Republic fourteen years ago. Through courage and unity, through the power of the people, we are home again. ”

“ All the assaults on our Government have fallen flat and harmless because the people believe in our Government, in its honesty and sincere desire to work for the common good.
When this session opened, the great powers of the State that were united in my person divided, and a portion has flowed to you. I have felt no loss but rather a great sense of achievement. The great work we set out to do, for which the nation made me its single leader, is completed. We have this day opened the door of Asian democracy’s most famous home: the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines. ”

“ Through political initiatives and local re-integration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and by economic progress and justice, show them that which the best-intentioned among them fight. As president among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace 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. ”

“ But I believed then-and time has proved me right-that this nation shall find no greater source of strength to defend democracy than in the enjoyment of all its rights and liberties. Democracy is our faith and the root of our strength to defend it. ”

“ It is liberty that has brought us progress, freedom that has generated growth. It is democratic space that has brought the insurgents down. But there is another side to freedom, where abuse displaces responsibility.
We have too often descended to mutual abuse, suspicion and recrimination in our political life. Far from respecting each other’s motives, we are losing the trust that held us to­gether and gave us the strength to prevail. ”

“ 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 be 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. ”

“ Let us not, however, use the reduction in strikes by itself as an invitation to more investments, but rather as a barometer of the more equitable distribution of the progress we are making. We are instructed by this welcome development to work towards even greater equity in the distribution of wealth as the surest means to social order and peace.
Our greatest investment in enhancing national productive capacity is in education – in developing the intelligence and the sinews of our people, as it were. ”

“ It is an achievement entirely in our power to preserve and enhance.
Visitors from the new Germany asked me what things strengthen democracy. Economic progress, naturally, I said. But the attainment of that depends on external factors more than on the will of a developing country. But there is a way to strengthen democracy that is within any country’s reach. That is through the empowerment of the people. This is obvious to a government like ours that came to power by its means, as well as to a people like the Germans who attained complete freedom in the same way. ”

“ That trust comes from expecting the best of each other, and equally from giving our best. Across our country, millions of Filipinos are doing that everyday: giving the sweat of their brows and the strength of their arm, above all their ingenuity and energy, to make a better future for us all. Those who stand on the pinnacles of power should be shamed by the more earnest commitments of those who labor anonymously below. ”

“ It is fitting and proper that, as the rights and liberties of our people were taken away at midnight twenty years ago, the people should firmly recover those lost rights and liberties in the full light of the day. Ninoy believed that only the united strength of a people can over turn a tyranny so evil and so well organized. It took the brutal murder of Ninoy to bring about the unity, the strength, and the phenomenon of People Power. ”

“ We will not stop until we bring down the public sector deficit to the more tolerable three percent as a ratio to our Gross Domestic Product. We are determined to bring this ratio further down in the next two years.
We continue to strive to make compassion a genuine hallmark of our society. But as we take the path of maturity, we see the greater need to balance compassion with the strength of the arms of justice. ”

“ The economic recovery has restored old fortunes far more significantly than it has touched the lives of the vast majority of our people. For all that, we can­not downplay our economic progress. For it has spoken more eloquently to the world than words ever could. It has earned us tremendous respect throughout the world. This was shown in the Tokyo Consultative Group meeting which paid tribute to the country’s growth with low inflation, despite the debt. ”

“ For, surely, in the words of an architect of conflict and peace, “a society becomes great not by the victories of its factions over each other but by its reconciliations.” To this end, we shall continue to exhaust measures and avenues that will involve all our people in the task of moral and material reconstruction and national unity. ”

“ People empowerment, through people’s organizations, NGOs, foundations and cooperatives, is the surest means we know to make government mirror the aspirations of the people.
In the past, the idea was to give the people just enough power to elect their mistakes and suffer the consequences until the next election. Elections were a safety valve. We want elections to be just one of other more effective means to bring the people into government and government to the people, to make it truly a participatory democracy. ”

“ At stake here, too, is the very application of the principles of our democracy: where our people make the choice; where the final judgment on the morality of their choices is left to the freedom of their conscience. ”

“ When a subservient parliament announced my opponent’s victory, the people then turned out in the streets and proclaimed me the President of all the people. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. ”

“ Three and a half years have passed since the Revolution. Recalling the perils we passed, and the ground we have covered, I marvel at the kindness of God and the strength of our people – at the fortitude and ingenuity of a race that did so much with so little, and in so short a time. ”

“ I could do the smart thing still, and do the things my opponents unfairly charge me of preparing – rigging the elections in 1992, the way I did not rig the ratification of the Constitution, the national elections, and the local elections. They way they rigged elections from 1969 to 1986. But my instructions to the military and police are explicit.
Let them hear it again:
The right of the soldier and the policeman is merely to cast his vote; his greater and solemn obligation is to assure the right of others to cast their votes and get them honestly counted. ”

“ I am conscious that history will judge the achievements of this Government and the usefulness of democracy not through the narrow perspective of the business centers in Manila, but by our success in making a better future for all Filipinos. It is in the fields and barrios, in the slums of our cities, that we will ultimately be judged. ”

“ Should we become a nation divided after this decision, then there shall be no sovereignty to speak of. To follow our national will, whatever option we might take, we must first agree to rid ourselves of unhealthy division. Only then can we stand up to any foreign nation and say, “This is our people’s decision; we shall pursue it by every means.” ”

“ That pride and that confidence rest however on their continuing faith in the one solid and undeniable achievement of the great moral exertion of our people: the establishment of a democratic Government under an honest and dedicated leadership. In short, it rests on their continuing faith in a Government that will lead them to permanent peace, free­dom and progress. ”

“ In the riot-torn streets of Caracas, in the teeming barrios of Mexico, in our own barangays-no less than in Washington, Tokyo and Paris-there is growing recognition that something real must be done about the Third World Debt. ”

“ 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 may serve as well as a redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner as one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, $2 billion dollars out of $4 billion dollars which is all we can earn in the restrictive market of the world, must go to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received. ”

“ I submitted myself to the judicial process as an ordinary citizen, and exposed myself to indignities a president should not endure. But I want to encourage people to seek redress in the law, despite the inconvenience, rather than in vindictiveness, which has no end. I want them to make the cause of justice for one, the cause of justice for all. ”

“ I am truly encouraged by what our people have proved themselves capable of. They have worked hard with us to give substance to the meaning of participatory democracy, not just in the political arena, but in the realm of our nation’s social and economic life as well.
As President, I have deemed it fitting to enshrine in. a people’s movement the transformation of democracy from concept to reality by our countrymen. ”

“ Few countries, if any, have hewed as faithfully to the con­ditionalities of debt restructuring as the Philippines has. Our people have endured the most rigorous austerities, yet received no better treatment than those of countries that resisted. Yet, even as the realities of power force us to seek a just solution to the debt problem within the international financial system, those same realities may urge us someday to find that solu­tion anywhere we can. ”

“ I mention these calamities not to excuse the perceived shortcomings of my administration nor to brag about my indestructibility. I mention them so that we know where we are, and why we are here, and the exact requirements of the task to build up this country yet again.
I mention them because I will compare them with what we had and lost, and then I will ask, Was it all in vain? And I will answer, it was not; no more than a hero’s life is wasted.
By 1985, the economy has contracted considerably, its rate of growth had been negative for two consecutive years. ”