Cory Aquino’s last SONA

The typical State of the Nation Address (SONA) is a recitation of the legislative agenda. I was fortunate that I was present in an uncommon SONA in that it was inspirational – president Cory Aquino’s last SONA given on July 22, 1991. Here is the first half of that address, with the second half to follow in my next column.

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In March 1973, six months after the declaration of martial law, Ninoy Aquino was taken blindfolded from Fort Bonifacio and brought to a place he did not know. He was stripped naked and thrown into a cell. His only human contact was a jailer. The immediate prospect, in such a place, was a midnight execution in front of a grave dug by himself.

The purpose was as clear as it was diabolical. It was not to kill him yet, but to break him first… 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.

On the third anniversary of his incarceration in Laur, the recollection of his pain gave birth to a poem of hope. This is the poem he wrote:

I am burning the candle of my

life in the dark

with no one to benefit

from the light.

The candle slowly melts away;

soon its wick will be burned

out

and the light is gone.

If someone will only gather

the melted wax, re-shape it,

give it a new wick –

for another fleeting moment

my candle can once again

light the dark,

be of service

one more time,

and then … goodbye

This is the anguish of good men: that the good they do will come to nothing. That pains suffered in obscurity or sacrifices made away from the sight of men, amount to the same, and mock the man or woman who bears them.

That is not true. None of the good that we do is ever lost; not even the light in an empty room is wasted.

From Ninoy’s burnt-out candle, and thousands like it in cells throughout the garrison state, we gathered the melted wax and made more candles. To burn – not as long in such loneliness – but much more brightly all together, as to banish the darkness, and light us to a new day.

You might ask, “When will the president stop invoking Ninoy’s name?” My answer is, “When a president stands here other than by Ninoy’s grace. And not while gratitude is nourished by memory. Not while we acknowledge that it was his sacrifice that gave us back our freedom. And restored the freely elected office whose incumbent must stand every year in this place.”

Five years have passed. My term is ending. And so is yours. 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.

It would be foolish to ignore what is staring us in the face. Our march of progress brought us far, but such misfortunes have come upon us as to make us feel that we are not much farther from where we started.

The eruption of Mount Pinatubo is the biggest in this century. 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. In the wake of the volcanic eruption, more has been revealed about that relationship than was covered by its ash.

Before Pinatubo, there was the typhoon that cut a wide swathe of destruction across the southern regions. And before that was the killer quake that cut off the northern parts of the country, destroying billions of pesos in infrastructure, causing the loss of billions more in foregone economic activities. It leveled the City of Pines and buried children in the rubble of yet another city.

But those natural calamities were preceded by another entirely the work of human hands: the massive December 1989 military revolt that cut short a second economic recovery, after the dislocation caused by the earlier August 1987 coup attempt. That one strangled the powerful rebound of the Philippine economy after the EDSA Revolution.

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 had contracted considerably, its rate of growth had been negative for two consecutive years. The country was at a standstill, as if waiting only for the last rites to be performed. By 1986, we had turned the economy around – in less than a year. We improved on that performance the year after.

The rate of unemployment was reduced, the volume of new investments significantly increased. New industrial projects were introduced, hitherto idle industrial capacity was fully utilized. The foundation of new regional industrial zones was laid. Public infrastructure and services strained under the load of expanding economic activity. To be continued

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