Corazon Aquino

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We need a truly effective navy to secure our coastlines against fresh infusions of arms to rebel or fascist forces, and to punish any further attacks on our territorial honor and integrity, especially in the South. ”

“ Yet even as necessity has forced our hand to agree­ment, we vow never again to let the patrimony of this nation lie at the feet of these noble houses that have finally shown the true face of foreign finance. ”

“ Some will say that force does not address the roots of insurgency. I will answer: Indeed, for such roots are ad­dressed by measures of economic improvement and equitable distribution. But such measures also need time to bear fruit, time that only feats of arms and negotiating from strength can buy us. ”

“ In the great debates that will ring in this chamber, remember also these words of his: “Insist upon truth by loving argument, by the testimony of your own life. Once you are assured of the truth, refuse to recant even to death. ”

“ The Economic Program
When I took power in this country 17 months ago, I was immediately called upon to deal with the dangerous combination of a severely distressed economy and a grow­ing insurgency; threats which fed on each other and on the hopelessness and confusion which prevailed. Production had contracted by 11 percent for two consecutive years, bringing unemployment rates to double-digit levels. Twelve percent of the labor force, nearly 2.6 million workers were unemployed. (And up to now, 750,000 join the labor force every year.) Real per capita income had been set back 10 years. ”

“ The application of force will be as effective as it is judicious. The operational thrust of our Armed Forces is predicated on deterrence, preemption and destruction. But the question is: Can we execute? If we have come to ask our soldiers to do battle to secure our way of life, then we have an obligation to equip them sufficiently for the fight. ”

“ We have chosen to improve upon our capability to effectively manage force not so that we, who desire peace, could wage war, but rather so that those who would war upon us will realize, by the deadliness of our riposte, the virtues of peace. ”

“ We cannot help but feel that our foreign creditors took undue and unfair advantage of the internal difficulties we have had with factions intent on subverting this Government and destroying our democracy. ”

“ The domestic structural reform program we have initiated cannot be pursued in earnest unless the necessary financing is made available. Fresh funding is needed to effect adjustments in the industrial structure, to assist new ventures, and to support our social programs. This funding cannot come from the domestic economy. Low domestic incomes cannot generate the required savings. Meanwhile debt service was taking half our export earnings. ”

“ We created an Asset Privatization Trust and a Committee on Privatization to start the divestiture of government control or participation in private business and, with the Sequestered Assets Disposition Authority, to help fund the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program that I enacted last week.
External Cooperation
Recession hit the international economy in the early eighties. Every economy suffered, but the heaviest toll was taken on the fragile economies of the developing nations. ”

“ Interest payments on a $26.3 billion external debt took almost half our export earnings. And as I must stress yet again, no part of this debt benefited, or perhaps was even seriously expected to bene­fit the Filipino people. Yet their posterity to the third gene­ration and farther are expected to pay it.
Poverty blighted the land. Five million families (or 59 percent of the total) lived below the poverty line, as com­pared to 45 percent in 1971. Dictatorship had done nothing but make more of our people poorer. ”

“ What is important is that this time it is not the world market, but a reinvigorated domestic economy that is paving the way to recovery. Investments reversed their contrac­tionary trend of the past three years. The 23 percent growth rate in investments promises a respectable real GNP growth for the rest of the year.
The current budget has a definite bias for health care, education and social services expenditures. Some 6.9 million people received food assistance from the Food and Nutrition Program in 1986. ”

“ The program required a reduction in our debt burden and increased support from bilateral and multilateral institutions. Simply put, we needed to buy time for our structural reforms to start paying dividends. And time is money. While a fool and his money are easily parted, we have discovered that our foreign creditors are not such great fools as the past leadership of our country. ”

“ Even as their memory continues to freshen our sorrow, may their sacri­fices ever nourish our idealism and commitment to our people, and remind us of the painful lesson that “a govern­ment that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.” ”

“ Our Armed Forces are asked to do more for less. De­fense appropriations are down 1-1/4 percent of GNP from an average of 2 percent prior to 1986. We have been able to afford this reduction because of the moral victory we gained in the February Revolution. Still, our defense expenditures are the lowest in ASEAN, and yet no country’s security is so seriously threatened as ours. ”

“ The dictatorship gave special privileges to government corporations and select individuals. In their various forms these enterprises had several things in common: They en­riched the few at the cost of impoverishing the many. ”

“ For the record, our foreign debt stands today in excess of $28 billion. The increase from $26.3 billion when we took power is largely accounted for by the weakening of the dollar against major currencies. ”

“ Still our march towards nationhood must be unde­terred and any threat to its progress will be countered with all the resources available to us, wielded with as much pas­sion as self-preservation can muster. ”

“ We do, however, have a dire need to improve our intelligence, logistics and communication services. Given our limited resources, we must improve our ratio of patrols to contacts, and our capability to maximize such combat opportunities as present themselves. ”

“ Area Unified Commands have been established to facilitate force aug­mentation and complementation within and across the major services, particularly in areas where military operations are either imminent or ongoing. ”

“ Teachers’ salaries were increased, and a leaner and more relevant curriculum was adopted. Some 5.2 million poor availed of vital services such as self-employment assistance, job placement, and family planning. ”