Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the Commencement Exercises of the Philippine Military Academy Class 1993

[Delivered on March 21, 1993]

Young soldiers
of the people

TRADITION HAS MADE my presence here today a moral obligation as your commander in chief. But this is also a privilege for me both as your President and as a former cadet and an old soldier who has not yet faded away.

It was not too long ago that I was a young cadet myself, imbued with vigor, zeal and idealism. Coming out of the Military Academy, I had little inkling then of conflicts I would have to face—both on and off the battlefield. All I possessed was the discipline of Academy life, the sense of duty and honor which is every soldier’s source of pride and abiding responsibility, and my faith in the boundless providence and mercy of an all-protecting God.

The demanding life

It would be absurd to imagine that training in military school equips us with all the answers to the cares of life. But one thing it clearly provides—and that is the opportunity and the preparation to live the unique and demanding life of the soldier.

I feel blessed and humbled for all my years in the military service and for being chosen by our people to occupy this highest office in the land. It has been an arduous journey, fraught with adventure and the learning born of pain, combat and sacrifice.

I have seen death—not only the physical expiration of the body, to which we must all submit—but the death of courage and of hope among a few of us. But I have also been privileged to witness the indomitable resurgence of our people’s spirit—at EDSA, in February 1986, in our streets, offices, farms and factories, and in your faces here today.

At this point of a retired soldier’s career, I can only marvel at this miracle of renewal, which we are now enacting. How and why a young person of superior mind and body should forgo the easy comforts and rewards of a civilian career in more lucrative professions to become a soldier? How and why—in this material age—such timeworn abstractions as “duty” and “honor” continue to command the worship of the finest of our youth?

Alab ng puso: the desire to excel

How and why indeed, were it not for the timeless imperatives of nobility, the call to greatness, the desire to excel, to which you have so willingly responded.

Every country, no matter how impoverished or disadvantaged, needs a home for greatness: a place where we can be reminded of our noblest possibilities, and where those possibilities can be nurtured to fruition. In such a home, only the best of people must be admitted and tutored. And then only the very best of those aspirants must be given back to society, to ennoble their fellow men by their service and example.

The Philippine Military Academy is one such home.

Every citizen, regardless of economic or social position, has a hero’s heart, aflame with the passion to help and to do good to others. Among ordinary people, it may take extraordinary circumstances for the heroism to emerge. But for a PMA graduate, that heart beats constantly.

The name you have chosen for your class—”maalab”—speaks well of the fire in your spirit, which you pledge to keep alive forever and to share. I will hold you to that pledge—and so will our people.

Remember, however, that fire by itself can either do good or do ill. It can be a source of light and warmth, but untempered it can also destroy. From you we seek the fire that forges iron into steel, that accomplishes the mission against great odds, that guides the lost traveler, that comforts those without shelter, that comes to the aid of the weak and that protects the nation in time of danger.

Think back a moment and recall. This nation came to birth from the toils and strivings of very young men and women. Men like Rizal, del Pilar, Jacinto, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo who in their twenties kept their appointments with history at an age when our young people today are just coming out of college and starting their families.

Though young in years, our revolutionary heroes had mighty visions of the future. Their lives were touched with fire, such that they faced the white man’s armies and steel, and founded the first republic in Asia.

Returning to the roots of idealism

Thus, if we are to rise again as a nation—to the progress that is within our talent to achieve—it will be by returning to the roots of idealism and patriotism that mark our history. We have to look at our country and ourselves afresh—in much the same way that this nation must have looked to our young heroes of a century ago, who believed that freedom and progress were the inevitable fortune of our race.

We have to look at our future in much the same way that a young man and woman look at tomorrow as he or she comes out of school—with hope, caring and daring.

In our time, especially during the last ten years, our nation has seen great upheavals in which military professionals, themselves Academy graduates, have been principal players—sometimes on opposite sides of the battleground. But the will of the majority has always prevailed, the Constitution upheld, democracy strengthened and people power enshrined.

Your four years in this Academy have been among the most momentous in the world’s and our nation’s history. Old empires have fallen, shaken to their cores by the bankruptcy of outmoded ideologies. Communism and military adventurism have been rejected by democratic systems. New nations and alliances have risen, each brimming with hope and urgency for enduring peace and sustained prosperity. While it is a sad fact of politics that some people have taken up arms to advance their narrow aims under the guise of revolutionary reform the overwhelming and universal clamor for genuine and enduring peace with justice can no longer be denied.

The new battleground

I have taken the initiative in reaching out to all dissidents and rebels fighting the State, so that our people—for too long burdened by political divisiveness—may be unified into a democratic and dynamic nation. We are prepared to listen. We are prepared to forgive. But above all we must be prepared to submerge our individual and parochial interests in favor of the national interest and the people’s welfare.

In this new battleground, unswerving discipline must define the true meaning of the Academy’s revered motto of “Courage, Integrity and Loyalty”—loyalty above all to country and people that must transcend loyalty to class, party and family.

As the military historian and critic John Keegan tells us, the soldier in our time is called to a different style of leadership that is “dedicated not to a strategy of conquest but of security.”

We need peace and security so we can work, so we can grow. All over the world today, peoples and governments are realizing that the most important wars of the twenty-first century may be fought not on the battlefield, but in corporate boardrooms, in the farms, in the research laboratories, in the assembly plants, in schoolrooms and even in community centers where livelihood is generated.

These are battles we must be productively engaged in. We have no choice but to develop and to grow; the frightening alternative is national stagnation and the rule of the mob. The real enemies are poverty, injustice, fear, ignorance, criminality, corruption, environmental degradation and population pressure.

We Filipinos surely are more fortunate than others in that we are very well positioned to achieve our national objectives. We are blessed with a live and functioning democracy that enables us to harmonize the interests of the diverse groups in our society under a Government that is accountable and responsible to our people.

We have a central, strategic position in the geography of Asia and the Pacific. We have natural resources and human talents sufficient to turn this country into Asia’s next economic success story by the turn of the century. And we should always thank the good Lord for all of these.

But we have handicapped ourselves—tragically and needlessly—by harping on our weaknesses, instead of building on our strengths, by being crabs instead of dragons.

Deliberation and discipline

I have visited some of our Asian neighbors these past few months to observe their transformation from their postcolonial backwardness to growth and sustained prosperity, and the most important lesson I have learned is that progress demands unity, discipline, hard work and teamwork. These are all qualities and assets that we can—and must—draw from deep within ourselves, because no one else can give them to us.

But having said that, we must now tell ourselves that there is a time for talk and deliberation, and there is also a time for action. That time for action is now. The soldier in the field, the lieutenant in combat, cannot afford to be assailed by doubt and irresolution when the objective has been identified, the enemy at hand, and it is time to advance.

While those in the military have been trained to receive orders from above, we must also recognize that civil governance is a complex process. It needs patience—and a largeness of mind and heart—to understand and to respect this process.

Indeed our political and military leaders can learn much from each other. Deliberation and discipline—these must go together, as they did in the person of the philosopher Socrates, who was himself once a foot soldier in the great armies of his time.

In due time, the members of this class of ’93 will distinguish themselves in many capacities—in the military, in Government service, in the private sector. Your idealism and dedication will be much needed in these places. As we root out the corrupt and the inefficient in the Armed Forces and the National Police, and indeed in the entire Government service, we will replace them with people made of sterner stuff. This will be the challenge and the burden of your generation: to restore pride, professionalism and excellence in the service while respecting authority and the rule of law.

A new officer corps in the making

At least once in our lives we must all aspire for glory. For you, that moment has arrived. And your field of glory is broader than it has ever been. As you leave the PMA, indeed throughout your career, sharpen your minds as carefully as you assemble your weapons. You are soldiers of the people; be worthy of their trust and hope, in war as in peace, in combat as in nation building.

We are all prepared to die for our country; but the greater challenge lies in living and toiling for it, in performing the practical, though tedious, tasks of bringing the nation up to a stable, prosperous and competitive national society.

Let me extend a personal welcome in advance to a special breed of soldiers who will be with us very soon. I speak of the 16 women who will be joining the PMA corps of cadets in June. Another barrier has been broken, and rightly so. It gladdens me to see that this indeed is a new and truly democratic officer corps in the making, attuned to the needs and realities of our age.

Let us applaud these women and make them feel welcome and appreciated. Treat them with the dignity, respect and equality you show each other as officers and gentlemen. You know—and they will soon know—that the life of a cadet is difficult enough as it is, and the life of an officer even more so—as you yourselves will soon find out.