It is fitting that these ceremonies for “The Outstanding Filipino Awards” should take place here, in the house of our people — with the elected president in attendance.

Although this is a small gathering I have felt it necessary to prepare a speech for this occasion since these awards to outstanding Filipinos deserves no less than that.

If there is one place that has seen all the tidal changes in our history — and the march of the Filipino generations — it is here in this palace of the people- Malacañang.

In this very place exactly a month ago we gave out awards for the ten outstanding students of the Philippines.

So it is time the young, who are represented here by the Jaycee Senate give equal honors for the older generation — before it takes its turn in the ceaseless cycle noted by the wise king in Ecclesiastes:

“One generation passes away and another generation takes its place, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back where it came from.”

But if caution, circumspection and tentativeness are traits of the old, then these four people in whose honor we are gathered here today must be here under false pretenses.

Because they are in reality very young, they have been able to do what they have, and they have been able to challenge old beliefs and to experiment with new ways and new things.

They have the courage to think big, they have the resilience that disdains failure; and they have the boundless energy to pursue excellence wherever it may lead.

To eulogize them individually would be superfluous for their achievements — Arturo D. Gorrez in manufacturing: Manuel P. Manahan in rural development; and Leonardo P. Sarao in entrepreneurship — speak for themselves more eloquently than I could ever hope to do.

Let me just say how sorry I am that Dean Umali cannot be here physically, although he is represented here in a very important way by Mrs. Zenaida Umali. But his memorial is our country’s field — now green with young rice. For it was in agricultural research that Dioscoro L. Umali made his mark — not just in the Philippines but in the world.

While the Earth may go on without him, Dean Umali’s brief time among us has changed our country forever: in a way that stands to benefit millions of our countrymen who make their living from the soil.

What distinguishes these outstanding Filipinos from the rest of us?

I think it is not so much the quality of their material achievement — though this achievement is praiseworthy enough — but in the idealistic way in which they see our country.

It is obvious that they look at our country not as the “Sick Man of Southeast Asia,” as it is often contemptuously called: and our countrymen not as the abject housemaids and coolies of more fortunate peoples.

In a word, they see our country not as it is today, but as it can become.

And this is what we need to do — to see in our mind’s eye what greatness our country can attain — if only we recognized that as citizens we have only one fate to share.

All of us who are determined to live out our lives in this country must now do all we can to make life a little more hopeful, a little more bountiful — for ourselves and for our children.

The alternative is for us to condemn our young people to migration to other countries and ourselves to constant despair.

We need to foment among us therefore a civic revolution — an explosion of social energy that will enable us to catch up with our vigorous neighbors and become a newly industrializing economy by the year 2000.

Such a revolution must begin in our hearts and minds as a people.

It must begin as a revolution in social attitudes, in civic commitment and in national welfare.

We must — each of us — respond to our civic conscience.

We have no more time to spare. And we cannot, as a people, continue to play at divisiveness, each one pursuing his or her self-interest — without regard for the larger interest of the nation.

We must accept that national society is more — much more — than just an aggregation of individuals or families or clans.

We must realize that every human society is a partnership of the connected generations of changing persons that includes not only those who are living but those who are dead and those yet to be born.

And we cannot continue — as some have done in the past — to pass the buck to some future generation. There is no one here but us.

So many things to do, with so little time. And who, if not us, shall set things right? This is the challenge to us, let us tackle it now.

Thank you and good day.