If you were given a chance to write this speech with both aquino and locsin, what issues in 1986 would you like to address with?
Answers
Where some see weakness and confusion, I see strength in a government that is able to listen to the widest range of views and yet is able to move ahead with the kind of resolve we have adequately demonstrated over the last five months. As was dramatically proven by the fall of the Marcos regime, the strength of a government lies, not in its ability to speak with a single voice, as the Marcos government always did, and with a consistently lying voice at that, but in its ability to keep the trust and confidence of its people. And that ability hinges on the government’s willingness to listen to the people. Is the babble of popular voices too distracting for business? Remember that the decline of the Marcos dictatorship was marked by the silence of a people quietly withdrawing their support. They had lost all hope of a hearing.
This government is pledged to listen to the people and strains itself to catch every voice. We make no pretensions at a monopoly of knowledge, unlike Marcos. I have learned more about government from my direct contact with the people and their popular leaders in our consultations than I have from the pundits. Certainly more about their needs and how to go about meeting them given our limited resources.
What I am-afraid of is not an increasing number of views but a decreasing ability to heed them all, given the limitations of a pure Presidential government without the benefit of a separate legislature and local governments that are popularly elected and periodically responsible to their constituents.
This is why I have placed such a premium on the swift completion of the drafting of a new constitution. This is why I advised the Constitutional Commission to stick to the work of writing a constitution and not to usurp the legislative and policy-making functions of the representative institutions they are called upon to create. The commissioners were appointed to create the representative institutions of a democracy, institutions in which the preferences of the people would be heard and acted on by the people’s duly elected representatives and no others.
I want to preside over a full-blown democracy, with all the proper institutions and agencies in place that will be acutely sensitive to the public pulse. I said I would lead our people but only in the direction they wish to take. What this direction is, from among the many that various sectors of the nation propose, is something that the duly elected representatives will tell us.
The legislative and local elections will give your government the opportunity to present to our people a set of candidates who will assist us in the rebuilding of our nation. It is to be hoped that the mandate we now enjoy at the national level will translate into an equally powerful mandate in the legislative and local government levels, so that the reconstruction of our nation can proceed with full vigor and dynamism and a minimum of obstruction.
In the meantime, my mission is to strengthen the unity that we as a people displayed in the Campaign and Revolution. I want to bring into that unity even the forces that opposed us, who must know that our victory is irrevocable. For we now face a greater and common foe — the underdevelopment and poverty of our country — and the greater challenge of making its material progress commensurate with the spiritual triumph of the Revolution.
It is against this backdrop then that we must assess our progress to date, and our ability to move forward in the future. As we take stock, it is appropriate to recall what we said during the campaign would be our main economic thrusts:
We said we would restore credible leadership through personal example.
We vowed to drastically reduce, if not totally eliminate, graft and corruption in government.
We said we would relentlessly pursue the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies. The applause that followed this pledge was deafening.
We said that the focus of our economic policies would be the unemployment problem.
And we said that rural development would be assigned the first priority it has long deserved.
And how have we fared in the five months since we assumed office?
We have reestablished the credibility of the Philippine government not only in the eyes of the Filipino people but before the entire world; this credibility rests not only on a president who, I believe, still enjoys the overwhelming support of the people, but also on cabinet and sub-cabinet appointees who are widely acknowledged to be outstanding, even if also outspoken, men and women of intelligence, integrity, and political sense.
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