Inaugural Speech of President Corazon Aquino

Inaugural Address

by Corazon Aquino
11th President of the Philippines
Delivered on February 25, 1986 at the Club Filipino, San Juan, Metro Manila

My brothers and sisters:

I am grateful for the authority you have given me today. And I promise to offer all that I can do to serve you.

It is fitting and proper that, as the rights and liberties of our people were taken away at midnight twenty years ago, the people should firmly recover those lost rights and liberties in the full light of the day. Ninoy believed that only the united strength of a people can over turn a tyranny so evil and so well organized. It took the brutal murder of Ninoy to bring about the unity, the strength, and the phenomenon of People Power. That power has shattered the dictatorship, protected the honorable military who have chosen freedom, and today has established a government dedicated to the protection and meaningful fulfillment of the people's rights and liberties.

We were exiles in our land — we, Filipinos, who are at home only in freedom — when Marcos destroyed the Republic fourteen years ago. Through courage and unity, through the power of the people, we are home again.

And now, I would like to appeal to everyone to work for national reconciliation, which is what Ninoy came back home for. I would like to repeat that I am very magnanimous in victory. So I call on all those countrymen of ours who are not yet with us to join us at the earliest possible time so that together we can rebuild our beautiful country.

As I always did during the campaign, I would like to end with an appeal for you to continue praying. Let us pray for God's help especially during these days.