"Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice"
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Aquino’s line refuses the lazy happy ending. It’s not a plea for calm; it’s an argument about durability. “Reconciliation” is the word people reach for when they want history to stop being inconvenient, when the powerful prefer a national reset button over a reckoning. Aquino answers with a condition: reconciliation only holds if it is tethered to justice. Otherwise it’s a truce between unequals, a pause that lets old hierarchies quietly reassemble.
The sentence is built like a warning label. “Should be accompanied” sounds almost gentle, but the subtext is steel: without accountability, peace is temporary theater. Then she sharpens it with the most politically dangerous phrase in any transition period: “not…at any cost.” That’s a direct pushback against the post-dictatorship temptation to trade truth for stability, to grant amnesia in exchange for quiet streets.
Context does a lot of work here. Aquino became the democratic face of the Philippines after Marcos, leading a fragile government with coup threats, entrenched elites, and victims demanding redress. Her rhetoric has to keep two audiences in view: citizens hungry for change and institutions anxious about upheaval. So she frames justice not as vengeance but as principle, something that legitimizes peace rather than disrupts it.
It’s also a subtle critique of “unity” as a weapon. Aquino insists that peace without justice isn’t peace; it’s deferred conflict, with the bill arriving later, higher, and paid by the people who already suffered first.
The sentence is built like a warning label. “Should be accompanied” sounds almost gentle, but the subtext is steel: without accountability, peace is temporary theater. Then she sharpens it with the most politically dangerous phrase in any transition period: “not…at any cost.” That’s a direct pushback against the post-dictatorship temptation to trade truth for stability, to grant amnesia in exchange for quiet streets.
Context does a lot of work here. Aquino became the democratic face of the Philippines after Marcos, leading a fragile government with coup threats, entrenched elites, and victims demanding redress. Her rhetoric has to keep two audiences in view: citizens hungry for change and institutions anxious about upheaval. So she frames justice not as vengeance but as principle, something that legitimizes peace rather than disrupts it.
It’s also a subtle critique of “unity” as a weapon. Aquino insists that peace without justice isn’t peace; it’s deferred conflict, with the bill arriving later, higher, and paid by the people who already suffered first.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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