Eighty-five annual State of the Nation Addresses (SONA) have been delivered since 1935 by 15 presidents of the Philippines. The presidential speech had been delivered in English until the last time in 2009. Benigno Simeon Aquino III was the first president to deliver the SONA in Filipino. He used Filipino in all six of his speeches from 2010 to 2015.
Marcos Sr. had 20 SONAs in his 20-year incumbency, from 1966 to 1985 (inclusive of Martial Law) — the greatest number of SONAs by a single president in Philippine history.
The longest speech was given by Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. in 1969, which had a total of 29,335 words (it was about a 2.67-hour speech). Rodrigo Duterte’s SONA in July 2021 was two hours and 39 minutes long, about 26,242 words. In contrast, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s speech made in 2005 was the shortest, with only 1,551 words.
Today, July 22, 2024, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos, Jr. will deliver his third SONA before the Legislative body that represents the people, with the Judiciary and guests in attendance.
The State of the Nation Address as an annual practice began during the Commonwealth Era from 1935 to 1946, when the Philippines was an unincorporated territory and commonwealth of the United States, following the Tydings-McDuffie Act that replaced the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands. The Insular Government was headed by a governor general who was appointed by the president of the United States.
The Commonwealth government was designed as a transitional administration in preparation for full Philippine independence. It had a strong executive, legislative, and judicial system (except that foreign relations were still handled by the US). When the Commonwealth of the Philippines was created and the 1935 Constitution enacted, it provided for an annual report of the President of the Philippines to Congress.
Under Article VII, Section 5 of the 1935 Constitution, Manuel L. Quezon and the Presidents after him were mandated to “from time to time give Congress information on the state of the Nation, and recommend to its consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
Article VII of the 1935 Philippine Constitution was copied word for word from Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution. The yearly Philippine SONAs take after the yearly US State of the Union addresses given by all American presidents since George Washington first fulfilled this particular duty on Jan. 8, 1790 when he addressed the New Congress of the United States of America.
“The contents of the (State of the Union) speeches typically contain information and status updates of the country and federal government during the incumbent president’s administration,” the New York Times said in an op-ed article, “The State of the Union is Unreal” (Jan. 31, 2006).
“It has become customary to use the phrase ‘The State of the Union is strong,’ sometimes with slight variations, since President Ronald Reagan introduced it in his 1983 address. It has been repeated by every president in nearly every year since, with the exception of George H.W. Bush. (But) Gerald Ford’s Jan. 15, 1975 address had been the first to use the phrasing ‘The State of the Union is… not good’.” (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov, Retrieved Feb. 6, 2019).
The first Philippine SONA by President Manuel Quezon, addressing the National Assembly started on ground-zero for the new Commonwealth. “Mr. Speaker, gentlemen of the National Assembly: As I appear before you for the first time, allow me to extend to you my cordial greetings and congratulations upon your election to this august body… It is your unique privilege to serve our country at the most critical period of its existence — at a time when the course of its destiny will be charted,” he said.
In his SONA’s 4,390 words (approximately 25 minutes delivery time), Quezon focused only on the urgent need for “a defense system to be ready for effective employment whenever the interests of the nation so demand.” The National Assembly was urged to pass enabling laws for the defense system immediately. (The full text of the first SONA is available from the National Archives.)
Quezon’s SONA did not really present the totality of the state of the nation and offer his plan of action to address issues. What seemingly annotated and expanded his evaluation and directions on the true state of the nation were fiery headline stories: “Meet challenge to Democracy, Quezon urges Assemblymen” (The Tribune, June 17, 1935); and “Nation of helpless citizens can expect nothing but slavery at home, Quezon says” (The Tribune, Nov. 26, 1935), among his other brave and feisty public declarations. The state of the nation was not good, according to President Quezon.
“I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans,” Quezon famously or infamously said. A Time Magazine article, “The Philippines: prelude to dictatorship?” (Sept. 2, 1940) saw Quezon as “Full of energy, brilliant, brittle, as unpredictable as a hummingbird, he spent seven years reminding the US Government of its promises to set the islands free.” But Francis B. Sayre, US High Commissioner for the Commonwealth flatly declared that the Tydings-McDuffie Act meant what it said: the Philippines were to be cut loose in 1946 (Ibid.).
The invasion and occupation of the Philippines by Japan started on Dec. 8, 1941, 10 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. World War II deferred decisions on Philippine independence. Japan occupied the Philippines for over three years, organizing a new government and directing civil affairs until October 1943, when they declared the Philippines an “independent republic” administered by supervised cooperative Filipino leaders.
General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region, landed on the island of Leyte on Oct. 20, 1944, accompanied by Sergio Osmeña, Sr., who had succeeded to the commonwealth presidency upon the death of Quezon on Aug. 1, 1944. Fighting for the liberation of the Philippines continued until Japan’s formal surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. After barely a year of reconstruction and rehabilitation under the rehabilitated Commonwealth led by Osmeña Sr., the United States of America finally granted Philippine independence on July 4, 1946. The first president of the Republic of the Philippines was Manuel A. Roxas, and the first Vice-President was Elpidio R. Quirino.
Perhaps the worst fallout from the experience in World War II and the Japanese occupation was the change in the socio-political culture of the Filipinos. The anxieties for independence, personified in the patriotic and ambitious Manuel L. Quezon, were heightened by the intervention of imperialist Japan, when the promise of independence by imperialist America was yet to be realized. Yet the political maneuverings of interested individual successors to foreign imperialists touched sensitivities in recalling the history of the fight for independence. Thus, Time’s scathing article asked, is this “a prelude to dictatorship?”
Rivalry between the two parties, the Nacionalistas and the Liberals dominated Philippine politics from 1946 until 1971. Both took turns to capture the presidency and control both chambers of Congress. That should have been good for the country — to maintain the political balance of power and the democratic separation of power among the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branches.
“But do we have a two-party system? If we have none, then how can we call ourselves a democracy? But if we have a two-party system, how explain the constant political turncoatism, the interchangeability of parties? Why do Filipinos change parties as often, it sometimes seems, as they change their shirts? Is it because Filipinos are less honorable politicians than others of the breed?” Teodoro M. Locsin asked in a speech during the “Seminar on Politics in Asia,” on Nov. 29, 1963, at the University of the Philippines.
“Better a government run like Hell by Filipinos,” Manuel Quezon said, surely not meaning to be derogatory or insulting to the Filipino, but perhaps a subliminal, unintended admission of collective and even personal guilt.
So, will we ever have a SONA where our President will admit, “The state of our nation is not good”?
Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.
