Corazon Aquino

“ 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. ”

“ 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 convinced it is in all our best interest to respect an independence that may thwart the government’s will from time to time – but is yet our best assurance of justice when we will need justice most. ”

“ Besides, the spirit of our race will not accept a dictatorship; and memories, fresh as the scars it left, will not let us consider that option again. Democracy is the only way for us. We must therefore find the ways by which the pitfalls that go with its blessings are reduced, while its inherent strengths are brought to the fore. Of those strengths, the most promising is people power, a reserve for nation-building we tapped only once in our history with such marvelous result.
A detailed report of the performance of government is before you ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not to kill him yet, but to break him first – and with him break the compelling proof that men can stand up to a dictatorship.
He came close to giving up, he told me; he slipped in and out of despair. But a power that must have been God held him together. He remembered the words of the epistle, God chose the weak to confound the strong. ”

“ But empowering the people means more than just giving them elections of every three years. It means enlarging their contact with government beyond elections to its daily workings – so that the vast resources of one support the initiatives of the other, and the policies of government are refined by the insights of the people. ”

“ But surely, our objective is right – the improvement of our people’s lives. And the new way is much better than those before. To give the people greater power over their lives is the essence of democracy that we must strive to bring out completely. ”

“ Someone who will do better may stand in this place next year - for I believe in the inexhaustible giftedness of the Filipino people. I only hope that he will be someone who will sincerely mean you well.
I hope that history will judge me as favorably as our people still regard me, because, as God is my witness, I honestly did the best I could. No more can be asked of any man. ”

“ The organized participation of the people in daily government may provide the stabilizing element that government has always lacked. Policies have radically changed with each administration, yet the basic needs of its unchanging constituencies have not been met: less bureaucracy for business, more public services and infrastructure support for agriculture and industry, an economic safety net for the common man. The active participation of the people in government will lend proper direction and continuity to policy. ”

“ This is the only way to end the character of total war that elections have assumed, where the aim is the division of spoils and the victims are not just the losers but those who voted for them, too. Such elections are like Russian roulette where your chances are five to one your life will not improve, and one to five you will blow out your brains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The good we do is never lost. Some of it remains, if not in material goods, then in a deeper experience, a more practiced hand, and a spirit made stronger by that which failed to break it – stronger to meet greater challenges ahead.
But in one thing we grew from strength to strength – in the enlargement of our democratic space and the strengthening of our democracy. ”

“ Participatory democracy will end the practice of punishing provinces and municipalities for the wrong vote in the last poll. It will separate elections, where the people vote for their favorites, from the provision of public service which every Filipino has a right to expect from the government, regardless how he voted. ”

“ Abroad, its effect is so far-reaching as to lower the temperature of the earth. At home, it is so devastating it knocked off 80,000 productive hectares from our agriculture, and destroyed the commerce of at least three provinces. Hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes and livelihoods, and thrown on the kindness of relatives and countrymen, and on the solicitude of the state. It was an event so powerful it wiped out the largest military base in the Pacific, and changed the nature of our relationship with an old ally. ”

“ Surveys showed that an elected convention was the popular choice to draft a new constitution. But I believed it was more important to draft a constitution and submit it for ratification in the shortest time possible, and hold elections immediately. The people and the army needed a full elected government and a constitution around which to rally in defense of freedom. ”

“ As we came, so should we go. With grateful acknowledgement to the man who made it possible for us to be here. A man who discovered hope in the starkest despair, and has something yet to teach a country facing adversity again. ”

“ By this means the lives of the people shall be constantly improved and the people themselves empowered by the habit of directing their own government. The constant revision of flawed policies and the wider application of good ones are possible only by bringing together the people and the government. ”