Growing fuel for rural dev’t
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: August 19, 2009
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet, Philippines—When environmental scientist Michael Bengwayan and his staff succeeded where government scientists had failed in propagating an upland petroleum-rich tree, he had in mind forsaken rural communities.
“Rural communities must learn to propagate this indigenous tree, extract its fuel and use it to spur their own development,” he says.
Bengwayan, executive director of the Pine Tree, a nongovernment ecological education, training, research and information center in La Trinidad, Benguet, was referring to the “petroleum nut” or resin cheesewood (Pittosporum resinferum).
The plant, which is native to the Cordillera and other upland areas in the Philippines and a few other countries such as China, has an octane rating of 54, compared to jatropha’s 41 to 43. Fossil fuel has an octane rating of 91.
Octane rating is a measure of the ability of a liquid motor fuel, such as gasoline, to prevent pre-ignition or knocking. Fuels with higher octane rating are less likely to cause knocking.
Fuel for countryside
Bengwayan and his technicians discovered how to extract oil from the petroleum nut fruit, which, they said, could be used for cooking, lighting and running simple machines and gadgets, such as water pumps and grinders.
For cooking, petroleum nut oil is not only more efficient and cheaper than firewood or charcoal. Three to five trees can yield about 15 liters of oil per harvest, and since harvest is twice a year, these amount to 30 liters, which a family can use for cooking for three to four months, says Bengwayan.
Fifteen to 20 trees can already supply a family’s year-round cooking fuel needs.
Three parts of petroleum nut oil, however, have to be blended with one part of kerosene if used for cooking.
Once it becomes popularized as cooking fuel, petroleum nut oil can free upland people from cutting trees for firewood or charcoal. This can help save and enable critical forests and watersheds to regenerate, Bengwayan says.
For lighting, two parts of petroleum nut oil can be mixed with one part of kerosene to fuel a Petromax lamp. But petroleum nut oil need not be blended with anything if used for a simple oil lamp.
As water pump fuel, petroleum nut oil can enable upland residents to draw water from lower elevations for irrigation or household use.
The possibilities that petroleum nut oil can do to propel rural industries are endless, says Bengwayan. Upland folk can use the tree oil for blacksmithing, food processing, milling grains, threshing rice and grinding reeds, grasses and weeds for compost, among other things.
With its higher octane, petroleum nut oil can also be tapped as alternative fuel for vehicles.
But Bengwayan is keen on propagating the plant for simple industries in neglected rural communities than promoting it as alternative fuel for vehicles, which only a few rural residents can afford.
This, he says, is in consonance with his organization’s mission of fighting poverty and environmental decay through scientific research and innovations.
Community control
But rural communities must secure and take control over this highly priced tree, which, Bengwayan says, is a rare species also under threat from biopirates.
For this to happen, they must learn the basics of propagating and planting the tree through seed-banking, extracting the oil and finally documenting these, he says.
“Documenting the tree’s traditional and new uses is the communities’ means of protection against outsiders who may attempt to patent its properties and uses,” he says.
Under patent rules, applicants can only seek patents for those that are new. So outsiders cannot patent uses or properties which communities have already discovered and documented.
Bengwayan says the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) can help communities protect their endemic resources through documentation before “biopirates” come in.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act and Article 8(j) of the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity protect traditional knowledge against those who seek to steal the resources of indigenous communities and its accompanying traditional uses.
As a rare species, petroleum nut is best propagated through seeds.
The Forest Research Institute of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has succeeded in propagating petroleum nut through cutting, using tissue culture.
But Bengwayan discourages this because taking the branches of the few remaining petroleum nut trees in the forests for tissue-culture will all the more lead to their extinction.
He says the best way is to propagate the oil tree through seeds and bring back the seedlings to the forests.
Propagating the seeds, however, is challenging and it requires patience. Bengwayan and his technicians almost gave up in their experiment of propagating oil tree through seeds in 2005.
But just as when they almost lost their patience, the petroleum nut seeds they sowed began to germinate after almost three months. “We found out the seed of this tree had a long dormancy (temporary cessation of growth or metabolism),” he says.
They lost no time in propagating petroleum nut seeds starting 2006, securing these in nurseries.
They have since propagated more than 30,000 seedlings, which they have scheduled to give to some 23 farmers in the upland towns of Kibungan and Kapangan in Benguet. These will be planted during the rainy season.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Cory's speech that conquered America
(Note: I am reprinting this transcript of Tita Cory's speech, which I got from the blog of another fan of the woman in yellow. I also came to appreciate the speech after I watched Jessica Soho's 2008 interview with our former president, which was shown (3 or 4 August) after our beloved Tita and mother succumbed to cancer 1 August 2009. This was a speech, which, some said, conquered America. This is a speech, which we can let our children read so they will learn to appreciate the freedom they are currently enjoying and will be ready to protect this freedom when it is subverted. s.)
(Complete Transcript of President Corazon C. Aquino’s Speech before U.S. Congress
Pres. Aquino’s interview back in 2008 with Jessica Soho revealed that one of the highs during her Presidency was when she spoke before the U.S. Congress, another was when she made the cover of Time Magazine as Woman of the Year.
A commenter requested for a copy of the Full Transcript of Pres. Aquino’s Speech but I could not find one online. I took the liberty to watch and listen as I transcribed her speech from Youtube videos.
Some of the words may have been misspelled since I couldn’t make out the words properly. Please feel free to send in corrections if necessary and I would be happy to correct it.
In honor of Pres. Corazon Aquino, I am presenting the transcript of her magnificent speech before U.S. Congress. The speech was so eloquently delivered by Pres. Cory Aquino that I wanted to capture every word. As I was reading through the written words, it reminded me why I rallied behind her, why every Filipino did as well. We will surely remember her forever. She was a woman of integrity and strength. As a tribute to my beloved President, here’s the full transcript.)
President Corazon C. Aquino’s Historic Speech before the joint session of the United States Congress,
Washington, D.C. - September 18, 1986
Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Distinguished members of Congress.
Three years ago I left America in grief, to bury my husband Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also, to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the President of a free people.
In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to 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 victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.
For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month, was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator and traitor to his oath, suspended the constitution and shutdown the Congress that was much like this one before which I’m 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 Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy 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 democracy, the press, the congress, the independence of a judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights, Ninoy 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 a threat of a sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three 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. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then he felt God 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 end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed 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, Ninoy 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 news 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 and 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 passivity 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 States.
The task had fallen on my shoulders, to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms, and with truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of 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 newspapers. You saw a nation armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and corruption. You saw women poll 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 imitation. At the end of the day before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced 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 said, “I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon Aqauino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the 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 obligation it entails that I assumed the Presidency.
As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with a lash shall not in my country be paid by blood drawn byh 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 Filipino.
Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again as we restore democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill 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 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 five hundred. Unhampered by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than sixteen thousand. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local re-integration 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 among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. 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 of peace and taking up the sword of war.
Still, should it come to that, I will not waiver from the course laid down by your 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 Abraham Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.
Finally may I turn to that other slavery, our twenty-six billion dollar 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 vested on us have been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. 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, a more stringent world economic conditions, marshal plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.
When I met with President Reagan, we began an important dialogue 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 have 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 the 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 redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner as one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, two billion dollars out of four billion dollars which is all we can earn in the restrictive market 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 by the bondsman’s two-hundred fifty years of unrequitted toil. Yet, to all Americans, as the leader to a proud and free people, I address 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 it.”
Three years ago I said, Thank you America for the haven from opression and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today I say, join us America as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the opressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.
**********
After the speech, Sen. Bob Dole said to President Aquino, “Mrs. President, You’ve hit a home run.”
“I hope the bases were loaded.”, she replied.
Later that day, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give the Philippines an assistance package of $200 million dollars.
(Complete Transcript of President Corazon C. Aquino’s Speech before U.S. Congress
Pres. Aquino’s interview back in 2008 with Jessica Soho revealed that one of the highs during her Presidency was when she spoke before the U.S. Congress, another was when she made the cover of Time Magazine as Woman of the Year.
A commenter requested for a copy of the Full Transcript of Pres. Aquino’s Speech but I could not find one online. I took the liberty to watch and listen as I transcribed her speech from Youtube videos.
Some of the words may have been misspelled since I couldn’t make out the words properly. Please feel free to send in corrections if necessary and I would be happy to correct it.
In honor of Pres. Corazon Aquino, I am presenting the transcript of her magnificent speech before U.S. Congress. The speech was so eloquently delivered by Pres. Cory Aquino that I wanted to capture every word. As I was reading through the written words, it reminded me why I rallied behind her, why every Filipino did as well. We will surely remember her forever. She was a woman of integrity and strength. As a tribute to my beloved President, here’s the full transcript.)
President Corazon C. Aquino’s Historic Speech before the joint session of the United States Congress,
Washington, D.C. - September 18, 1986
Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Distinguished members of Congress.
Three years ago I left America in grief, to bury my husband Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also, to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the President of a free people.
In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to 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 victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.
For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month, was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator and traitor to his oath, suspended the constitution and shutdown the Congress that was much like this one before which I’m 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 Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy 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 democracy, the press, the congress, the independence of a judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights, Ninoy 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 a threat of a sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three 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. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then he felt God 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 end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed 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, Ninoy 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 news 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 and 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 passivity 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 States.
The task had fallen on my shoulders, to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms, and with truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of 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 newspapers. You saw a nation armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and corruption. You saw women poll 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 imitation. At the end of the day before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced 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 said, “I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon Aqauino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the 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 obligation it entails that I assumed the Presidency.
As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with a lash shall not in my country be paid by blood drawn byh 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 Filipino.
Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again as we restore democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill 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 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 five hundred. Unhampered by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than sixteen thousand. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local re-integration 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 among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. 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 of peace and taking up the sword of war.
Still, should it come to that, I will not waiver from the course laid down by your 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 Abraham Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.
Finally may I turn to that other slavery, our twenty-six billion dollar 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 vested on us have been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. 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, a more stringent world economic conditions, marshal plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.
When I met with President Reagan, we began an important dialogue 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 have 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 the 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 redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner as one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, two billion dollars out of four billion dollars which is all we can earn in the restrictive market 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 by the bondsman’s two-hundred fifty years of unrequitted toil. Yet, to all Americans, as the leader to a proud and free people, I address 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 it.”
Three years ago I said, Thank you America for the haven from opression and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today I say, join us America as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the opressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.
**********
After the speech, Sen. Bob Dole said to President Aquino, “Mrs. President, You’ve hit a home run.”
“I hope the bases were loaded.”, she replied.
Later that day, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give the Philippines an assistance package of $200 million dollars.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Tita Cory, democratic space, and a wedding
Tita Cory, democratic space, and a wedding
By Maurice Malanes
3 August 2009
Let me remember President Corazon Aquino through my own life.
The call of the 1970s and early 1980s had thrust me into activism. The country was under a dictatorship, which pushed many youths not only to activism but also to extreme options like going to the hills to take up arms. I didn’t choose such extreme option.
After finishing my undergraduate course, I became part of a church-based ecumenical institution, which sought to challenge church leaders and laypersons to live out their Christian faith in service to the least of their brethren. That was mid-1982.
I was not much of an activist while in college. I was more inclined towards spiritual pursuits. Books on Oriental philosophies and religions appealed more to me than Das Capital or Philippine Society and Revolution. So the Buddha’s middle way or the path of moderation became as appealing as Lord Jesus Christ’s admonition of loving God with all of your being, loving your neighbor as you love yourself and loving even one’s enemy. As a seeker, I also tried listening to the doctrines of various groups such as the Moonies, the Mormons, the Iglesia ni Kristo, and the following of a spiritual teacher who stressed on the spiritual path of bhakti or devotional service to God. I later appreciated how the path of bhakti reinforced the path of servant-leadership Lord Christ himself lived and showed.
These spiritual pursuits in a way helped prepare me when I became part of this church-based ecumenical institute. This institute sought to challenge church leaders and laypeople to transcend their God-and-me mindset and broaden this towards a God-me-and-society kind of faith. The country was under martial law so the challenge our educators at the institute often posed was: How can you live out your faith in the face of excesses, killings and other human rights abuses, oppression, hunger and poverty amidst abundance, plunder and corruption? The institute in a way helped mold activist priests, pastors, nuns and other church workers.
At that time talking about and defending human rights would put you in danger. Small wonder, the lives of church people who did advocate about human rights and social justice were at risk. Some had been summarily killed or had disappeared without a trace. (Unfortunately, these things still happen and remain among the tragic ironies of our time more than 20 years after the ouster of the Marcoses.)
In the course of my work with this ecumenical institute, I met my would-be life-time partner and friend. That was 1985 and the protest against strongman Ferdinand Marcos rule was mounting. The protest against the dictatorship began to rise after the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on 21 August 1983 at the Manila International Airport during his return following a three-year exile in the U.S. He was assassinated while being escorted by soldiers sent by Marcos.
Under Marcos, life was difficult for activists. Still, even under difficult times, love and courtship had a way of entering our lives. But at that time the future seemed uncertain so the thought of marriage and the desire of settling down and living normal lives seemed remote. Marriage and raising a family had to wait.
But unknown to me, a significant phase of history was unfolding. The heightening protest against 20 years of authoritarian rule, 14 years of them under martial law, forced Marcos to hold a snap presidential election in 1985. Reports say the election was also pushed by the US. Sen. Aquino’s widow, Corazon, after too much prodding from oppositionists and critics of Marcos, finally accepted to challenge Marcos in the elections.
The state-controlled election commission declared Marcos the winner in that election. But tallies of the independent election watchdog, Namfrel (National Movement for Free Elections) showed otherwise.
The questionable results of that snap election angered a nation yearning for freedom and democracy. Protest rallies swelled on the streets of Manila and other cities. Meantime, soldiers led by constabulary chief Gen. Fidel Ramos and then defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile revolted against Marcos in February 1986.
Corazon Aquino and Manila Cardinal Jaime Sin called on Filipinos to mass on the streets of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) to support the Ramos-Enrile-led military revolt. The throngs of people did not only save the necks of the revolting soldiers, who, without "people power," could have been sitting ducks for Marcos’ soldiers. The “people power” peaceful revolution finally convinced Marcos that his time was up.
My girlfriend still takes pride in recalling that she was part of the throngs of Filipinos who trooped to EDSA to drive away a dictator. I was also in Baguio City, 250 kms north of Manila, participating in a counterpart “people power” vigil at the Baguio Cathedral. With the Marcoses ousted and exiled to Hawaii on 25 February 1986, Corazon Aquino was proclaimed president at Club Filipino in San Juan. Marcos’ so-called New Society era was over, and another era just began.
Under Tita Cory, anti-Marcos activists enjoyed a reprieve. Cory’s government provided some kind of a democratic space, which enabled a number of activists to rethink and re-plan their lives. For my part, that democratic space became an auspicious time to get married. So one fine morning on 7 June 1986, my fiancée and I were wed at the Church of the Risen Lord at the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus in Quezon City. The wedding was ecumenical. Jesuit priest Carlos Abesamis (now deceased) of Ateneo’s Loyola House and United Church of Christ in the Philippines’ bishops Juan Marigza, Ben Dominguez, and Erme Camba officiated our wedding.
After our wedding, I focused on journalism, which I failed to practice full-time under Marcos.
For Tita Cory, who left us 3:18 early morning of 1 August 2009 when all of us were sound asleep, I join the rest of the nation in saying, “Thank you very much.” Without the democratic space Tita Cory’s government provided, my wedding could have been postponed indefinitely or could have been scuttled outright. With that democratic space, I have since been practicing my journalism, writing for newspapers also borne out of people power.
My wife and I now have two sons, whom we are struggling to support until they can stand on their own toes. Through them, we continue to relay the story of our lives, which, like those of the rest of the nation, Tita Cory helped shape and influence in a positive, loving way.
By Maurice Malanes
3 August 2009
Let me remember President Corazon Aquino through my own life.
The call of the 1970s and early 1980s had thrust me into activism. The country was under a dictatorship, which pushed many youths not only to activism but also to extreme options like going to the hills to take up arms. I didn’t choose such extreme option.
After finishing my undergraduate course, I became part of a church-based ecumenical institution, which sought to challenge church leaders and laypersons to live out their Christian faith in service to the least of their brethren. That was mid-1982.
I was not much of an activist while in college. I was more inclined towards spiritual pursuits. Books on Oriental philosophies and religions appealed more to me than Das Capital or Philippine Society and Revolution. So the Buddha’s middle way or the path of moderation became as appealing as Lord Jesus Christ’s admonition of loving God with all of your being, loving your neighbor as you love yourself and loving even one’s enemy. As a seeker, I also tried listening to the doctrines of various groups such as the Moonies, the Mormons, the Iglesia ni Kristo, and the following of a spiritual teacher who stressed on the spiritual path of bhakti or devotional service to God. I later appreciated how the path of bhakti reinforced the path of servant-leadership Lord Christ himself lived and showed.
These spiritual pursuits in a way helped prepare me when I became part of this church-based ecumenical institute. This institute sought to challenge church leaders and laypeople to transcend their God-and-me mindset and broaden this towards a God-me-and-society kind of faith. The country was under martial law so the challenge our educators at the institute often posed was: How can you live out your faith in the face of excesses, killings and other human rights abuses, oppression, hunger and poverty amidst abundance, plunder and corruption? The institute in a way helped mold activist priests, pastors, nuns and other church workers.
At that time talking about and defending human rights would put you in danger. Small wonder, the lives of church people who did advocate about human rights and social justice were at risk. Some had been summarily killed or had disappeared without a trace. (Unfortunately, these things still happen and remain among the tragic ironies of our time more than 20 years after the ouster of the Marcoses.)
In the course of my work with this ecumenical institute, I met my would-be life-time partner and friend. That was 1985 and the protest against strongman Ferdinand Marcos rule was mounting. The protest against the dictatorship began to rise after the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on 21 August 1983 at the Manila International Airport during his return following a three-year exile in the U.S. He was assassinated while being escorted by soldiers sent by Marcos.
Under Marcos, life was difficult for activists. Still, even under difficult times, love and courtship had a way of entering our lives. But at that time the future seemed uncertain so the thought of marriage and the desire of settling down and living normal lives seemed remote. Marriage and raising a family had to wait.
But unknown to me, a significant phase of history was unfolding. The heightening protest against 20 years of authoritarian rule, 14 years of them under martial law, forced Marcos to hold a snap presidential election in 1985. Reports say the election was also pushed by the US. Sen. Aquino’s widow, Corazon, after too much prodding from oppositionists and critics of Marcos, finally accepted to challenge Marcos in the elections.
The state-controlled election commission declared Marcos the winner in that election. But tallies of the independent election watchdog, Namfrel (National Movement for Free Elections) showed otherwise.
The questionable results of that snap election angered a nation yearning for freedom and democracy. Protest rallies swelled on the streets of Manila and other cities. Meantime, soldiers led by constabulary chief Gen. Fidel Ramos and then defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile revolted against Marcos in February 1986.
Corazon Aquino and Manila Cardinal Jaime Sin called on Filipinos to mass on the streets of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) to support the Ramos-Enrile-led military revolt. The throngs of people did not only save the necks of the revolting soldiers, who, without "people power," could have been sitting ducks for Marcos’ soldiers. The “people power” peaceful revolution finally convinced Marcos that his time was up.
My girlfriend still takes pride in recalling that she was part of the throngs of Filipinos who trooped to EDSA to drive away a dictator. I was also in Baguio City, 250 kms north of Manila, participating in a counterpart “people power” vigil at the Baguio Cathedral. With the Marcoses ousted and exiled to Hawaii on 25 February 1986, Corazon Aquino was proclaimed president at Club Filipino in San Juan. Marcos’ so-called New Society era was over, and another era just began.
Under Tita Cory, anti-Marcos activists enjoyed a reprieve. Cory’s government provided some kind of a democratic space, which enabled a number of activists to rethink and re-plan their lives. For my part, that democratic space became an auspicious time to get married. So one fine morning on 7 June 1986, my fiancée and I were wed at the Church of the Risen Lord at the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus in Quezon City. The wedding was ecumenical. Jesuit priest Carlos Abesamis (now deceased) of Ateneo’s Loyola House and United Church of Christ in the Philippines’ bishops Juan Marigza, Ben Dominguez, and Erme Camba officiated our wedding.
After our wedding, I focused on journalism, which I failed to practice full-time under Marcos.
For Tita Cory, who left us 3:18 early morning of 1 August 2009 when all of us were sound asleep, I join the rest of the nation in saying, “Thank you very much.” Without the democratic space Tita Cory’s government provided, my wedding could have been postponed indefinitely or could have been scuttled outright. With that democratic space, I have since been practicing my journalism, writing for newspapers also borne out of people power.
My wife and I now have two sons, whom we are struggling to support until they can stand on their own toes. Through them, we continue to relay the story of our lives, which, like those of the rest of the nation, Tita Cory helped shape and influence in a positive, loving way.
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