Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
On Independence Day

[Delivered at the Rizal Park, June 12, 1993]

A call to duty

IN JOY and thanksgiving, we recall the birth of our nation.

Of all the gifts one generation can give to another, no gift is greater than the gift of freedom. Freedom is a gift that every generation must renew. Freedom is a legacy that its inheritors must enrich—and not expend.

To gather here today—on these grounds hallowed by the blood of heroes—is a blessing. It is also, for you and me, a call to duty.

If we are to extract from this special day its full meaning, we cannot be content to merely replay all that is glorious in our past. It is not enough that we eulogize our heroes. We must emulate their spirit. It is not enough that we remember what they did. We must match their deeds with our own.

Our historic task today

For the national leadership, the overriding task is to move the nation forward and to secure for our people the blessings of freedom and progress.

But this task is not of the leadership alone. It is also the task of citizenship. As the heirs—and stewards—of this republic, we have no greater mission than to see in our time the flowering of this nation our fathers seeded 95 years ago. There is no other way to fulfill that mission than to reform persistently our national life today.

On this day, 95 years ago, a young, strong and determined leader named Emilio Aguinaldo reverently raised the national flag in Kawit, Cavite, accompanied by the spirited playing of the original anthem called “Marcha Nacional Filipina.” On that day, through the raising of our flag and the playing of our national anthem, we demonstrated the will to win the independence which gave birth to the first Asian republic—Republika ng Filipinas.

Let us begin by acknowledging that we have not been the most prudent heirs to that generation who dared to found Asia’s first democratic republic.

“Light and life”

Rizal dreamt of Filipinos taking fate in their hands and raising their country to “light and life.” But we have plodded from year to year—drifting from crisis to crisis. We deserve better. Certainly we can do better. We can set the example for Asia once again.

Recall how this nation came to birth. At a time when colonial Asia barely began to dream of emancipation, our fathers were asserting the Filipino’s right to freedom.

Recall, also, how—in the crucible of World War II and in the trauma of dictatorship—our people found it in themselves to surmount adversity again and again. How—in the face of the strongman’s tanks and artillery—did we find the moral strength to expel his regime? The simplest—and truest—answer is that, in the worst of times, we Filipinos have always found heroism in one another.

Today’s circumstances may be different. Today’s challenges may be of a broader kind. But if we are to overcome our obstacles and achieve what we aspire to be as a nation, the same courage and resolve are asked of us.

The challenges before us are different—because circumstances have changed. The world has changed; and so have its demands.

When I reflect on the ups and downs of our history, I sometimes think we have repeatedly faltered to master the demands of each new time—after seemingly brilliant triumphs, we fell short again and again.

That is how we lost the head start in nation building in the 1950s. We clung to the illusion that self-government would effortlessly bring development. Equipped with the tools of an earlier era, we tried to make our way in the postwar world.

Thus by clinging to bankrupt ideologies and unworkable ideas, we missed the boat of modernization in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

And that is how we may fail again—if we content ourselves with the old nostrums and the failed politics of patronage in this time of new opportunity.

We can no longer afford these illusions of the past:

• That democracy without civic responsibility can bring development.
• That, while keeping intact the unjust structures that have kept our economy stagnant, we can have economic recovery.
• That prosperity can trickle down from the rich few to the impoverished many.

We cannot pray our way to progress

Today, it is plain that there can be hope for us only if it is hope for every Filipino. There can be development for this country only if it is development for every region of our archipelago.

And there can be progress and prosperity only if we yoke ourselves to the plow and put our shoulders to the wheel, talk less and do more, and create new wealth and modern enterprise.

Believers though we all are in the infinite mercy of Providence, we cannot pray our way to progress. Nor can we beg or borrow our way to prosperity. We can reach development only if we produce our way to it.

We cannot improve government—except by wiping corruption out of our public life.

We cannot have peace and stability—except by stamping out crime and rebellion.

We cannot install efficiency in our economy—except by reforming the way we have apportioned wealth and power, and by releasing the energies and talents of ordinary Filipinos.

Today, I can report to you that in all of these tasks we are moving forward. Our peace initiatives have succeeded beyond our expectations. They have brought military rebels and southern secessionists to the conference table and fragmented the insurgent Communist Party to its core.

I realize we remain subject to many severities of life—not the least being the power shortages that vex our lives, darken our homes and shut down our industries.

But, even in our energy problem, the worst is over, and relief is only a short distance away. And we must be cheered by recent discoveries of substantial oil and gas reserves in Palawan.

Developing as a prosperous democracy

In the economy, our basic concern is to dismantle the structure of protectionism and control, and bring down the monopolies and cartels built up by crony capitalism, and level the playing field of enterprise. We have deregulated all foreign-exchange transactions and are privatizing the largest public corporations. And we are moving progressively to reduce tariff restrictions on most of our imports, to open up the financial system to foreign participation, and to liberalize the entry and scope of foreign investment, without losing sight of the imperative to provide for the needs of the disadvantaged, our farmers and our laborers.

We are working to reconcile our oligarchic economy with our political democracy—not by discarding our representative system (as some well-meaning outsiders would have us do), but by democratizing the economy.

We accept that Government must lead—not by bashing together the heads of people, but by forceful persuasion leading to agreement on national goals and action programs, and by productive intervention.

Authoritarianism, as we have known, failed miserably for us; and we are paying its price until now.

If democracy is a handicap to development, then it is a handicap we accept gladly.

For all we have done, I claim no credit—other than the privilege of being chosen to lead our people and our country through this crucial period. The credit belongs to all of us. It belongs to all branches of government, which are collaborating to correct the structures and policies that rule our public life. Both chambers of Congress have been especially cooperative during its first session.

Credit also belongs to the entrepreneurs and investors who are restoring vigor to our economy. It belongs to local communities that have wakened to people empowerment and the new resources and powers flowing to them. It belongs to every social institution taking part in our adventure of development. It belongs, above all, to the millions of our countrymen—many of whom work in other lands—who are helping incalculably to support these changes taking place in our country today.

The meaning of independence

Now we must push our new reform movement forward and farther than ever before. And in this work, we must—in Rizal’s words—“expend the whole light of our intellect, and all the fervor of our hearts.”

On these grounds that our forebears called Bagumbayan to signify the new nation they dreamed of, and where Fathers Gómez, Burgos and Zamora and Dr. José Rizal were martyred, let us press together to accomplish the tasks before us.

The meaning of this day lies only in reverence for the past. The meaning of this day lies in belief and confidence in ourselves—and in our ability to take command of our own fortunes. If we dare as our forefathers did in 1898, there is no problem we cannot solve, no goal we cannot reach, no hope we cannot attain.

Today, then, in unity and resolve, let us rededicate ourselves to the tasks and programs before us: revival and growth of our national economy; consecration of the national leadership to the public trust; transformation of our social institutions and practices into vehicles for national modernization; and the collective awakening of each leader and every citizen to public duty.

Fighting the good fight

In the annals of nation building, it is written: “Never forget that unity is the distinct instinct of people who want to do something.”

I believe we have that kind of unity today. We all want to do something for our country—not tomorrow, but today.

We are done with merely scraping by, surviving from crisis to crisis.

Together, let us redeem the great debt that we owe those who founded this nation, the promise of a better life we have pledged to one another, and the duty we bear to those who will come after us.

In keeping with the words in the book of books, let us fight the good fight, let us finish what we have begun, and let us always keep the faith.