Address
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Awarding Ceremonies
[Released on July 31, 1992]
The politics of the young
DESPITE extreme work-pressure, I made sure I got here—because, among all the multitudinous awards that we Filipinos like to hand out to each other, I regard this annual tribute which the Philippine Jaycees and the Gerry Roxas Foundation together pay to the brightest and the best of our young people as worth while encouraging by the Presidency.
And one obvious reason is that this Award is the most appropriate for a young country like ours. After all 53 percent of all Filipinos are below 20 years old; while only three percent are about 65.
We who are old have made our mistakes. We have been humbled by life: We have learned its limitations. Therefore we are by definition cautious, circumspect, tentative.
Instilling the dynamic qualities of the young
Conservatism is no mean quality—but it is a quality of settled societies, of societies past their prime; and not of societies like ours, whose golden age lies ahead—not behind—us.
This is why, in our urgent effort to lift up the common life, we need to infuse in the national spirit the dynamic qualities of young people—the willingness to challenge old beliefs and to experiment with new ways and new things; the daring to think big; the resilience that disdains failure; and the boundless energy to pursue excellence wherever it may lead.
These are qualities we need desperately in our time in Government, in business, in science, technology and the other professions, in art and culture. I am particularly pleased that among those you have chosen, one of our own young men in the Cabinet is here, together with young Senator Joey Lina.
We also have from the Presidential Management Staff one who is an awardee tonight: our Commissioner on Elections.
A while ago José Pardo, president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that I must select TOYM or TOYM-WS for my Cabinet. That is what I have done—without knowing that they were TOYM awardees. You could tell the quality of these people—eight of whom are now in my Cabinet—because of the service, performance and record they have achieved since being given the TOYM Award.
These people are either Cabinet-rank or Cabinet members. They are José Cuisia, Governor of the Central Bank; Armand Fabella, Secretary of Education, Culture and Sports; Juan Flavier, Secretary of Health; Daniel Lacson, Presidential Adviser on Rural Development with Cabinet rank; Rodolfo Reyes, Press Secretary; Ramon del Rosario Jr., Secretary of Finance; and Joseph Estrada, Chairman, Presidential Anti-Crime Commission, which makes him a member of the Cabinet in addition to being the Vice -President of the Republic.
Seeing our country afresh
We need to look at our country and our people afresh—to see our country, not as the “Sick Man of Southeast Asia,” as it is today contemptuously called: and our countrymen not as the abject housemaids and coolies of more fortunate peoples.
We need to look at our nation through the eyes of the young: to see in our mind’s eye what greatness it can attain.
We need to see our nation as our revolutionary heroes of a hundred years ago must have seen it at its birth—as a nation in which every good thing is possible.
In a way, our times are as revolutionary—as radically different from the immediate past—as the times were during the nationalist agitation, in the last years of Spanish rule, which saw the rise of a generation of heroes as young as—if not younger than—the nine young people in whose honor we are gathered here tonight.
Young heroes of the Revolution
Of our galaxy of heroes from the Revolutionary Period—starting from the Propagandists of the late 1880s and ending with the political nationalists of the early American period—everyone would have easily met the age—and achievement—requirements of today’s TOYM Awards.
For instance, Graciano López Jaena was 32 years old when he founded La Solidaridad in Madrid.
Of all the heroes of the Revolution, Marcelo del Pilar was the late bloomer: he was 39 when he took over the editorship of Sol. But by then he was a veteran of the Propaganda Movement. He started attacking the frailocracy in his native Bulacan as a lawyer aged 30. And his satire was so biting that he had to flee to Spain to escape persecution by the monastic sovereignty.
At 26 years of age, José Rizal had finished the Noli; and at 35, he was dead, the first and greatest martyr of the Filipino nation then being born.
Andrés Bonifacio founded the Katipunan when he was 29 years old. And when the Revolution began, Bonifacio’s faithful deputy, Emilio Jacinto, was still four months short of 21.
Emilio Aguinaldo was the victorious general of the Revolution at age 27 and founder of Asia’s first free Republic at age 29.
General Gregorio del Pilar was only 25 when he fought his last battle, as Aguinaldo’s rear guard, at Tirad Pass.
Apolinario Mabini was 34 when he took up the intellectual and political leadership of the Malolos Republic.
And Sergio Osmeña and Manuel L. Quezon were both aged 29 when Osmeña became Speaker and Quezon the Majority Floor Leader of the first Philippine Assembly under American rule in 1907.
The shape of future politics
Today—as a hundred years ago—there is no lack of public tasks through which our young people can attain their own kind of civic heroism. And the most urgent is the reshaping and modernization of national politics.
In 1992 we saw the beginning of the end for the traditional patronage politics. Thanks to the city and town middle class, we may expect the rise of a more open, more honest, a cleaner, more idealistic, more purposeful kind of politics—the politics of the young.
Under this new politics, future Presidents, senators, congressmen and high local officials should be able to appeal above the heads of the politicians directly to the electorate.
As you know, I have made conciliation with our radical insurgents a keystone of my efforts to restore stability to our country. And one reason I am doing so is to prove to our idealistic young people who make up the cadres of the insurgency that national society is not closed to the possibilities of peaceful change.
Another urgent task is that of social justice—of the more equitable sharing of the fruits of economic growth. I note that there is a young entrepreneur among our honorees. I trust that our young risk-taker will make a public use of the private wealth his talent will amass for him.
At my Inaugural—and again at my State of the Nation Address—I declared my resolve to obtain for the poorest of our people the humanities of life.
I ask you—our nine young honorees and the young businessmen and professionals who are your hosts—to join me in a crusade to lay down the social and economic infrastructure on which the Filipino poor can build new lives.
Part of our task must be to compel those Filipinos who are not poor to fulfill their civic responsibilities.
I find it strange that the people who are resisting most strenuously the imposition of new taxes are those very same ones who are the most notorious evaders of the old imposts.
Appeal to young people
You and I must work together—to raise countervailing pressure against those interest-groups determined to keep things as they are. Groups like yours must speak and act for the Filipino poor—until the poor are strong enough to speak and act on their own.
You and I must generate a national consensus for eradicating national poverty and attaining a measure of social equality—because, at least in the short term, pro-poor programs will work against the interests of the nonpoor. More farm-to-market roads in the Bicol Peninsula will initially mean fewer flyovers in Metro Manila.
Human societies seek economic growth not just because it enables human beings to accumulate material goods. Economic growth is important because it allows individual human beings to realize the full possibilities of their lives.
Economic growth will mean nothing unless it leads us to a humane society.
What we must seek to build—my young friends—is a national community founded on the rock of caring, of accepting joyfully our responsibility for one another. And in this work you must insist on becoming our full partners. After all it is you who will have to live with our failures, no less than our triumphs.
Source:
Presidential Museum and Library
Ramos, F. V. (1993).
To win the future : people empowerment for national development.
[Manila] : Friends of Steady Eddie.