Answer to Question #259783 in History for Diiiiiiiiiiii

Question

What are the points in her speech that you agree and disagree with? Which line hit

home?

Answer 1

We agree with her in maintaining peace but ready to fight if necessary to preserve unity and democracy. In fighting communist insurgency, respect for human rights must be present at all times. 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, a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future found it 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 me 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 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 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 the 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 the threat of sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully–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.