Aquino’s final slogan: “Die with the lie”

It was not by accident or whimsy that the opening of the regular session of Congress, and consequently the President’s report on the state of the nation, takes place on the fourth Monday of July every year. It is a mandate of the Constitution.

By placing it in the third quarter of the year (July to September), instead of in January (which was the practice under the 1935 constitution), the 1986 Constitutional Commission was well aware that the Congress opening would run smack into the heart of our monsoon season, when the rains pour in torrents, along maybe a typhoon or two.