Unity, Memory, and the Lessons of Ninoy Aquino Day
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., in his message for Ninoy Aquino Day, urged Filipinos to draw lessons from history as a guide for leadership and citizenship. He underscored the values of peace and unity, describing the observance as a chapter in the nation’s shared story that “continues to echo across generations and public memory.”
The President reflected that the passage of time has given Filipinos “greater clarity and deeper perspective” in looking back on Aquino’s legacy. He stressed that commemoration achieves meaning only when the lessons of the past are translated into moral architecture, sound governance, and leadership “shaped by the enduring imperative to choose peace above quarrel, and dignity beyond differences.”
But beneath the rhetoric of reconciliation lies a more troubling contradiction. Marcos spoke of wholeness, sobriety, and foresight, yet his words are delivered at a time when many communities remain besieged by militarization and rights violations. While history, as he said, offers “continuing instruction,” the government today risks repeating the very patterns of suppression that defined the past it seeks to commemorate.
August is also marked as the month of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the body of rules meant to protect civilians during armed conflicts. Central to IHL are the principles of distinction, proportionality, and protection of non-combatants. These principles were created precisely to prevent atrocities—bombings of villages, arbitrary arrests, torture, forced surrenders, and the weaponization of civilians as guides or human shields. Yet reports across the country tell of civilians falsely branded as combatants, of women and even infants taken as hostages to coerce surrenders, of ordinary people killed and then labeled “terrorists” to sanitize the crime.
The irony is striking. Ninoy Aquino himself was once vilified and silenced by the state, dismissed as a destabilizer, only to be remembered today as a symbol of democratic struggle. His death ignited the 1986 People Power "Revolution"—a moment when Filipinos rejected authoritarianism and reclaimed dignity. To invoke his legacy while pursuing policies that trample upon human rights and popular dissent is to hollow out the very meaning of his sacrifice.
The government’s language of “unity” and “local peace” often masks a relentless campaign of gradual constriction. Communities are militarized, livelihoods strangled, dissenters criminalized, and critics tagged as enemies of the state. In the name of “preventing resurgence” of insurgency, the state risks branding anyone who asserts truth, justice, and social change as a threat to order. This is unity enforced not by consensus but by coercion.
Even the developmental promises cited—projects for health, education, and social services—ring hollow when basic demands remain unmet. Workers continue to press for living wages. Farmers still clamor for genuine land reform. Communities call for dignity, livelihood, and the right to organize without fear. These are not extremist demands; they are the foundations of a just society. Yet they remain overshadowed by political consolidation and subservience to foreign dictates in the spheres of economy, policy, and national security.
If Ninoy Aquino Day is to mean more than ritual remembrance, then it must challenge the nation to see beyond official speeches. It must call leaders to recognize that history is not only about reconciliation with the past, but reckoning with the injustices of the present. To honor Ninoy is to honor the people’s continuing struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.
Unity cannot be built on silencing dissent. Peace cannot be achieved by militarizing communities nor oppressing people because of their aspirations. And commemoration cannot be genuine if the lessons of history are invoked only to serve power, rather than to transform it.
True statecraft begins not with hollow declarations, but with courage to listen to the people’s demands, humility to correct historical wrongs, and resolve to pursue a peace grounded in justice. Only then will history’s continuing instruction bear fruit—not as empty rhetoric, but as living transformation for the generations to come.