President Sergio Osmeña’s speech inducting his Cabinet (Part V)

“To the peasant family who had lost work animals and seen its productive fields devastated by the enemy; to the artisans and the factory workers who are now jobless and in want; to the homeless city dwellers, fire victims now live in shambles and in crowded rooms unfit for human habitation; to the survivors of the wholesale massacres in Manila and other places in the Philippines.

“In the realization of the ideal of independence guaranteed by the United States, the roots of which may be traced back to the glorious days of the Philippine Revolution, the attitude of the Filipinos in Bataan and throughout the whole country has been a vital factor. This is so because it has inaugurated a new era in Filipino-American relationship. It has sealed forever the ties of friendship and understanding binding the two peoples. In the American people it has created a permanent interest in our welfare, our freedom, and our security. Into our people it has infused a new spirit of high responsibility and it has strengthened the friendship and goodwill towards the United States. To the other democracies of the world, this attitude has brought the conviction that the Filipino people has already come of age and as a result, these nations, anticipating the date of our independence, have treated the Philippines as an independent nation so that throughout our stay in Washington, D.C., our representatives met the representatives of these nations on a basis of complete equality.

“It is for this reason that in the first words I uttered upon my stepping on Philippine soil in Leyte on October 1944, I affirmed that we came not only to restore the functions of the Government of the Commonwealth which existed at the time of the Japanese attack on December 8, 1941, but to reestablish the Commonwealth Government in a more advanced and progressive form. With this advanced status, we will enjoy new powers which we propose to exercise with care and with the welfare of our people as our sole guide. Obviously, this new situation imposes likewise wider responsibilities which we should shoulder without vacillation.

“At this moment when we reestablish our Government in the capital of the Philippines, it is fitting that we make known the ideals and principles which will guide our actions.

“We hereby reaffirm our faith in, and adherence to, the principles of freedom and democracy, a faith and an adherence born, in the early days of our Malay history, nurtured by four hundred years of Western contact, consecrated by our revolutionary fathers, invigorated by the teachings of America, ratified in the constitutional processes of our Commonwealth, and now sanctified by the blood of the thousands of Filipino martyrs and heroes of the present war.

“We condemn the totalitarian ideology which the enemy has sought to impose on us under a government by self-constituted or God-chosen rulers, and we hereby reaffirm our devotion to the principles of popular sovereignty, of government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” (to be continued)