Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
During the Centennial Celebration of Rizal’s Martyrdom

[Delivered at the Quirino Grandstand, December 30, 1996]

Facing a new dawn

A HUNDRED YEARS have passed since that December morning when a young man—a Filipino such as we have rarely seen—was executed by a firing squad not too far from here.

The historian’s record tells us that “about 6:30 in the morning of December 30,1896, a trumpet sounded at Fort Santiago, announcing the beginning of a gloomy death march. An advance guard of four soldiers with fixed bayonets moved, followed by more guards to the rhythm of muffled drum music. The cortege marched slowly toward Bagumbayan Field, with the arms of the condemned man tied behind him from elbow to elbow.

Face turned to the rising sun

“After a brief ceremony at the spot of his execution and over and above the drum beats, the crowd heard distinctly military commands: Ready! Aim! Fire! And simultaneously a volley of shots came from the firing squad. In his Herculean effort not to die a traitor’s death, his bullet-riddled body veered to the right, so that as he would fall dead, his face could turn to the rising sun. This was exactly 7:03 a.m.”

When those shots were fired and the man crumpled to the ground, it meant the end of a bold and brilliant life—a life devoted as much to the fulfillment of our dream of nationhood as to the perfection of one’s individual talents.

Rizal died here, a hundred years ago, but it was his greatest triumph—and one of the most remarkable ironies of our country’s history—that his execution did not quell the fires of revolution, as his jailers may have hoped, but rather fanned them. For every bullet that pierced his body, thousands more would be fired in quest of freedom.

Many more Filipinos—and Filipino heroes—would sacrifice their lives before that freedom could finally be claimed. But it was Rizal who—in his time and also in ours—impressed upon his people the fact that the Filipino was worth dying for.

The same noble thought would be remembered and lived out by such other heroes as Ninoy Aquino. Today we take this as a truism—perhaps too easily, so that it does our spirit and our memory well to recall that Rizal’s life was not an easy one to give.

When he died, Jose Rizal was 35, a gifted and accomplished man, a veritable Renaissance man whose achievements spanned the realms of medicine, education, literature, art, linguistics, economics, engineering and sports. He was someone who had every reason to indulge in purely personal cultivation and selfish gratification, to leave politics and social causes to the more affluent and perhaps the less endowed.

His country as his constant compass

He could have escaped the tribulations that embroiled his country; he could have stayed in Europe, and parlayed his talents into a successful career in any one or two of his many interests.

But he did not, because his heart had always been here in the Philippines and with our people. Writing the Spanish Governor-General from Hong Kong in 1892, Rizal would declare that “the supreme obsession of my life has always been my love of country and its moral and material development.” Ten years earlier, during his first trip abroad, he had written from Barcelona, “Love of country is never effaced once it has penetrated the heart, because it carries with it a divine stamp which renders it eternal and imperishable.”

Throughout his travels and his letters, Rizal kept the Philippines and her beauty as his constant point of reference. For such a Muse, and for her love, a man could die, and die well. “Sweet is death,” he wrote, “for one’s native land.”

At the same time that he loved his country, Rizal did not fear to know the world. He was very likely our first global Filipino—a citizen of the planet.

Indeed, well before the Filipino was to be found in every comer of the world as now, Dr. Jose Rizal had been there before him, presaging our emergence as a people whose destiny would be linked to the earth’s own.

A patriot of the highest order

In his great work El Filibusterismo, he foresaw a time when humankind would become citizens of one world—when, he says, “there shall be no races, when there shall be neither tyrants nor slaves, nor colonies nor metropolis, when justice shall rule. . .”

This is the ideal of a universal humanity to which we all aspire, and today our increasing interaction with one another—the globalization of our economies and political relations—proves the relevance and viability of Rizal’s vision.

In his long-range view, this could be a better earth, a better world for all humanity: beginning with our becoming a better country for our own people.

Our economic strides, our growing self-confidence, our enhanced international prestige, the peace we have achieved in Mindanao, our new emphasis on social reform—all these are means by which we bring Rizal’s words and his spirit to life, by which we assure his continuing relevance to our times and to the Filipino future.

And much of the work ahead will take place here, to be done by you and me and by all of us. Before and even as he was a citizen of the world, Jose Rizal was—first and foremost—a son of his motherland, a patriot of the highest order, exhorting his countrymen and countrywomen to free themselves through study and through labor.

Today as we commemorate Rizal’s martyrdom and contemplate our own lives, let us think of how glorious Rizal’s life was, and how equally great and noble was his sacrifice.

This does not mean that you and I cannot aspire to meeting Rizal’s standards. Rizal himself recognized that we each have our own particular talents and endowments, our roles to play in the continuing drama of nation building.

Living by Rizal’s example

We are not even called upon to offer up our lives—except in the most extreme circumstances, such as we faced at EDSA a decade ago. We are called instead to imbue our lives and that of the nation with the principles that Rizal stood for: patriotism, service, excellence and selflessness.

Our greatest tribute to Rizal would be to make him a symbol of our aspirations for the 21st century. More than any other man, he was able to envision a nation that would be proud and free, the country and people that, by God’s grace, we have become.

The greatness that we can achieve is boundless if we are to pursue it as a united people, inspired by the memory and the example of the man whose death a hundred years ago gave life to the Filipino nation.

As Jose Rizal did, let us face the dawn of a new century—no longer to die, but to live in peace, freedom and prosperity.