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http://rtvm.gov.ph - President Corazon Aquino before the US Congress | RTVMalacanang | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: http://rtvm.gov.ph - President Corazon Aquino before the US Congress
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Summary
Core Theme
The core theme is President Corazon Aquino's address to the U.S. Congress, highlighting the Philippines' struggle for democracy, her personal journey, and her appeal for continued U.S. support in rebuilding the nation and addressing its economic challenges.
speaker of the house and the president
uh protm of the Senate and here we see Mrs
Mrs
aino she's accompanied by uh the
majority leader of the House of
Representatives uh Jim
Wright of Texas who is likely to be the
next speaker and other Congressional
leaders there's Senator Robert Dole
right behind her he's the majority
leader of the Senate and on his right is
the minority leader the Democratic
leader Robert bird of West Virginia
and you can hear the sustained and very enthusiastic
enthusiastic [Applause]
[Applause]
Applause this is much more than the
usual reaction that a that a uh a leader
would get coming into the [Applause]
[Applause]
chamber for many of them I think this
the first time they going to see m aino
in PR no question for the for the vast
majority of them and that is a real show
of emotion that you can see out there
and that's coming across the board
Democrats and Republicans liberals and
conservatives you can almost feel [Applause]
[Applause]
it now he'll the speaker will we'll
formally introduce her and then we'll
get another round of [Applause]
[Applause] applause
applause [Applause]
this about a long round of a loss
for president oh I think it's very very
important to to to stress that I've seen
a number of these where we've had
foreign leaders brought uh come before
the Congress and you'll get Applause
it's it's nice it's it's uh uh
appropriate and cord it's cordial this
is something far more than that and it's
meant to be a [Applause]
[Applause]
signal members will be
seated members of the Congress it is my
great privilege and I deem it a high
honor and personal privileged to present
to you Her
Excellency caroni aino president of the
[Applause] w
Mr
Speaker Senator
Thurman distinguished members of
Congress 3 years ago I left America in
grief to bury my husband Ninoy
Akino I thought I had left it
also to lay to rest his restless dream
of Philippine
Freedom today today I have returned as
people in burying noinoi 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 founded in a faithless and Brazen
Act of
murder so in giving we receive in losing
we find and out of defeat we snatched our
our
victory for the nation noinoi became the
pleasing sacrifice that answered their
prayers is for
freedom for myself and our children
noinoi was a loving husband and
father his loss three times in our lives
was always a deep and painful
one 14 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 he detained my husband along with
thousands of others Senators Publishers
and anyone who had spoken up for the
Democracy as its end Drew
near but for noinoi a long and cruel
ordeal was
reserved the dictator of already knew
that noinoi was not a body merely to be
imprisoned but a spirit he must
break for even as the dictatorship
demolished One By One The institutions of
of
democracy the press the Congress the
independence of the Judiciary the
protection of the Bill of Rights noinoi
kept their Spirit Alive in
himself the government sought to break
him by indignities and Terror they
locked him up in a tiny nearly airless
cell in a military camp in the north
they stripped him naked and held the
threat of a sudden midnight execution
over his
head lenoi held up manfully under all of
it I barely did as well for 43 days the
authorities would not tell me what had
happened to
him this was the first time my children
and I felt we had lost
him when that didn't work they put him
on trial for subversion murder and a
host of other crimes before a military
commission denoi challenged its
Authority and went on a
fast if he survived it then he felt God
in intended him for another
fate we had lost him again for nothing
would hold him back from his
determination to see his fast through to the
the
end he stopped only when it dawned on
him that the government would keep his
body alive after the fast had destroyed his
his
brain and so with barely any life in his
body he called off the fast on the 40th
Day God meant him for other things he
felt he did not know that an early death
would still be his fate that only the
timing was
wrong at any time during his long ordeal
noinoi Could Have Made A Separate Peace
with a dictatorship as so many of his
countrymen had
done but the spirit of democracy that
inheres in our race and animates this
chamber could not be allowed to die he
held out in the loneliness of his cell
and the frustration of Exile the
Democratic alternative to the insatiable
greed and Mindless cruelty of the right
and the purging Holocaust of the
left and then we lost him irrevocably
and more painfully than in the past the
new came to us in
Boston it had to be after the three
happiest years of our lives
together but his death was my country's
Resurrection in the courage and Faith by
which alone they could be free
again the dictator had called him a
nobody yet two million people threw
aside their paity and fear and escorted
him to his
grave and so began the revolution that
has brought me to democracy's most
famous home the Congress of the United [Applause]
States the task had fallen on my
shoulders to continue offering the
Democratic alternative to our
people archal Mich had said that
democracy must be defended by arms when
it is attacked by arms and by truth when
it is attacked by
lies he failed to say how it shall be
won I held fast to Nino's conviction
that it must be by the ways of the
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 and then also it
was the only way I knew by which we
could measure our power even in the
terms dictated by the
dictatorship the people Vindicated me in
an election shamefully marked by
government thuggery and fraud the
opposition swept the elections garnering
a clear majority of the votes even if
they ended up thanks to a corrupt
Commission on elections with barely a
third of the seats in
Parliament now I knew our
power last year in an excess of
arrogance the dictatorship called for
its Doom in a snap election
the people
obliged with over a million signatures
they drafted me to challenge the
dictatorship and I
obliged the rest is the history that
dramatically unfolded on your television
screens and across the front pages of your
your
newspapers you saw a nation armed with
courage and integrity Stand Fast by
democracy a against threats and
Corruption you saw women pole Watchers
break out in tears as armed goons
crashed the polling places to steal the
ballots but just the same they tied
themselves to the ballot
boxes you saw a people so committed to
the ways of democracy that they were
prepared to give their lives for its pale
pale
imitation at the end of the day before
another wave of fraud could distort the
results I announce the people's
Victory many of you here today played a
part in changing the policy of your
country towards
ours we the
Filipinos thank each of you for what you
did for balancing America's strategic
interest against human concerns
illuminates the American Vision of the
world the
co-chairman of the United States
Observer team in his report to the president
president
said I was witnessed to an extraordinary
manifestation of democracy on the part
of the Filipino people the ultimate
result was the election of Mrs corason
Akino as president and Mr Salvador Lael
Philippines 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 it is on that faith and the
presidency as I came to power
peacefully so shall I keep it that is my
contract with my people and my
he had willed that the blood drawn with
a lash shall not in my country be paid
by blood drawn by the sword but by the
tearful Joy of
reconciliation we have Swept Away
absolute power by a limited Revolution
that respected the life and freedom of every
every
Filipino now we are restoring full constitutional
constitutional
government again as we restore democracy
by the ways of
democracy so are we completing the
Constitutional structures of our new
democ ocracy under a constitution that
already gives full respect to the Bill of
of
Rights a 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 elections for both national and
local positions
So within about a year from a peaceful
but National upheaval that overturned a
dictatorship we shall have returned to
full constitutional go
government given the polarization and
breakdown We
inherited this is no small
achievement my predecessor set aside
democracy to save it from a communist
Insurgency that numbered less than
500 unhampered by respect for human
rights he went at it with hammer and
tongs by the time he fled that
16,000 I think there is a lesson here to
be learned about trying to stifle a
thing with the means by which it
thank I don't think anybody in or
outside our country concerned for a
democratic and open
Philippines doubts what must be
done through political initiative
and local reintegration 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 of all my people I
will not betray the cause of Peace by
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
[Music]
still should it come to that I will not
waver from the course laid down by your great
great
Liberator with malice towards none with
charity for all with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right
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 a Abraham Lincoln I
understand that Force may be necessary before
before
Mercy like Lincoln I don't relish it yet
I will do whatever it takes to defend
country finally may I turn to that other
slavery our $26 billion foreign
debt I have said that we shall honor it
yet the means by which we shall be able
to do so are kept from
us many of the 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 visted on us has been
extended yet ours must have been the
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
returning
democracy when I met with President
Reagan we began an important dialogue about
about
cooperation and the strengthening of
friendship between our two
countries that meeting was both a
confirmation and a new
beginning I am sure it will lead to
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 14
years and yet offer 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 give
them work that will 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 Insurgency
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 may serve as well as a
redout for freedom in
Asia yet no sooner is one stone laid
than two are taken away half are export
earnings $2 billion out of $4 billion
which is all all we can earn in the
restrictive markets of the world must go
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 ring the
payments from the sweat of our men's
faces and sink all the wealth piled up
by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited
unrequited
toil yet to all Americans as the leader
of a proud and Free People I address this
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 want it
by themselves and need only the help to preserve
3 years ago I
said Thank You America for the Haven
from oppression and the home you gave
noinoi myself and our children and for
the three happy years of our 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 Nations commitment to
president coron sakino in Her speech
before the joint session of the Congress
of the United States of America uh I'm
still with Norman orstein and U Norman
the speech was interrupted 10 times um
in its course and um I guess uh it is
obvious that the response has been
enthusiastic wildly enthusiastic I would
say orley we can see Mrs aino leaving uh
it's going to take her a while to get
out of this chamber because I think
you're going to find all kinds of
members of Congress those are mostly the
leaders now near the front of the
chamber who will want to shake her hand
she is uh a celebrity of uh of sorts in
this country now and uh I think she will
probably exchange greetings with some
members of Congress who she's met uh
over the years and uh others who are
just going to crowd forward to the front
of the aisles uh to to try to uh reach
out and shake her hand exchange a word
or two uh this was a very very
well-received speech very cleverly
presented I might I think it's balanced
uh considering the fact that uh we all
know um there are differences as far as
stances as regards uh Aid or policy that
which the Philippines is concerned uh
between the Democrats and the
Republicans and even amongst the
Republicans there are those who are more
in the air to the right yes there there
are definitely some conservative
Republicans who are fearful that uh uh
president aino is going to be too soft
towards the Communist and the Communist uh
uh
Insurgency uh and then there are members
of Congress frankly on both sides of the
aisle who are uh feeling the economic
pinch right now the tremendous budget
pinch but what Mrs aino did was to draw
in both sides uh uh talking about her
commitment to democracy and her desire
to avoid Bloodshed at at uh almost uh
any uh turn but also indicating her
determination to keep the Philippines free
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