INTRODUCTION
Colonel Alvez, distinguished guests, soldiers of the Special Forces, comrades-in-arms.

Since my retirement from the professional military, I have — as punishment for my sins — been reincarnated as a politician. But though I spend virtually all my waking hours with officials and technocrats my heart still belongs to the armed forces — and in the armed forces, as all of you know, the special forces is my first love.

And the career-achievement I am most proud of is my connection with this regiment, which I helped organize in 1962. I was then a captain, and rather old for my rank. We spent months training around camp Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija. Many a hill did we climb in that area. I also remember that we used to jump from old C-47s on to what is now White Plains — and the Corinthian Garden area — along EDSA, which was then a large and empty cogonal.

The Special Forces was organized to fight the war of mobility that we then expected the Philippine state would soon have to wage against communist insurgency. The insurgency had been beaten back, but not uprooted, during the Huk rebellion in central Luzon in the early 1950’s.

The campaign we saw coming did come — barely seven years after the Special Forces was organized, and the Special Forces did distinguish itself in many fields of the counter-insurgency. By that time, I myself had been reassigned, and I could do no more than follow from the sidelines the exploits of my comrades in the special forces.

Now the insurgency is winding down, but the Special Forces is correct to keep its guns oiled and blades sharp — because you may be sure that your old comrade here will rely the most on you, if any military crisis should threaten the Republic during his watch.

You may also be sure that I shall do all I can to uproot the root-causes of insurgency and rebellion in our country — so that your sons (whom I’m sure will enter the special forces after you) will not have to fight a third generation of rebels.

Poverty we Filipinos must learn to regard as a form of tyranny — a tyranny which oppresses so many of our people, against which we must declare the moral equivalent of war.

As President I intend to give the highest development priority to delivering basic social services — education, health and jobs — to rural communities in the poorest and most neglected provinces and regions of our country.

Thirty-eight years ago, President Ramon Magsaysay — who, as defense secretary, had broken the back of the Huk rebellion, enunciated the principle that “those who have less in life should have more in law”.

Yet it now seems as though we have merely succeeded in making the poor among us get less and less in life.

We need a more realistic and attainable ideal in our time. And Ibelieve this ideal should be the principle that: ” all should be equal before the law; and all should share in the patrimony of the nation, regardless of station, ethnicity or creed”.

So, before you my comrades-in-arms, i pledge that i shall do all i can to make insurgency irrelevant in our country.

Too many of our young men — both soldiers and rebels — have died in a fratricidal conflict that they had to fight because of inequality and the lack of social justice.

The foundation of my campaign for the presidency was my promise to restore power to the people. This promise I shall keep. Every one of us — including the least of our people — shall be given control of their lives, so that they can give their best to national life.

Together we shall work to make the economy grow — so that every Filipino will share in the bounty of our resources and the skills and talents of our people.

Throughout the political campaign, in my travels throughout the archipelago, I heard it said over and over by ordinary Filipinos that our national decline comes not from any flaw in the Filipino character nor from any basic fault in the individual Filipino, but from the government’s failure to lead.

And we cannot deny the truth of this remark — because when the conditions are right, we Filipinos have excelled, sometimes to the astonishment of the world.

Yet from the way successive administrations have conducted our affairs, it is as if we have worked overtime to make good President Quezon’s hyperbolic proposition that he would prefer “a government run like hell by Filipinos to one run by heaven by Americans.”

We have turned self-government into a parody of what it should be.

Today I say it is time we did better. If we can’t have a government run like heaven, we can certainly have one that is efficient and competent.

To that government of efficiency and competence, I shall dedicate my administration.

Comrades, I ask your prayers and your staunch support as I begin a new career.

Perhaps the presidency won’t be an entirely new career — because what I am called upon to provide this nation is no more than the kind of leadership I was once privileged to give this regiment.

Looking back, those days were really tough because as commander of the Special Forces, I was expected to be able to do myself everything I asked my men to do.

Looking back, it was in the Special Forces that I developed the strength, the tenacity, the hard work and the intelligence that the presidency demands.

As I begin my new job, I can be confident. After all, I survived the Special Forces 30 years ago. There is no reason I could not survive the rigors of politics now — particularly since I now have a good reason not to jump from an airplane ten thousand feet up anymore.

If Colonel Alvez should ever invite me up there, I can always say, “I would love to, except that the presidential security wouldn’t approve.”

Thank you all over much. I wish this regiment many more years.

Mabuhay kayong lahat!

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!

Maraming salamat po!