I write this as I stay by Imelda who is in bed in our bedroom as she is feeling sick.
We are trying to call up Col. Los Baños, the military attaché in London, so we can tell him to allow Bongbong to come home by plane alone but to inform the embassies on the way to watch for him. He may be coming from London on the 10th with the Zobel boys by Quantas which has a direct flight to the Philippines and Australia.
And I am trying to call [Roberto] Bobby Benedicto. I have talked to him to rib him about his cable. He informs me that the interrogation of [Benjamin] Mendoza was shown over TV in New York which is incidentally very cold. Mendoza said it was President Marcos who parried his thrusts with his kris-dagger and who prevented him from killing the Pope.
Met Mr. D.G.H. Rowlands of Thompson Foundation of England. He is the editorial studies director.
Signed the pardons for prisoners as I promised the Pope. And I have ordered that the prisoners penalized with imprisonment of not more than 5 years be kept in the provinces with expenses to be divided between the national and the provincial governments.
Am working on the recovery programs, the legislative proposals and the new development projects.
Official Gazette for November 30, 1970: President Marcos spent a quiet day working on government papers. In his message on the 107th birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio, the president, said:
On the occasion of Bonifacio day this year, we pay tribute to a man who inscribed his name in history by committing commonest of his fellowmen to the highest principles of individual honor, freedom and national dignity.
To that extraordinary common man, more than to many others perhaps in the pantheon of our remembered heroes, the nation owes much of the dynamic spirit that moves it to this day. Especially at a time when the nation is about to embark in the historic act of rewriting its Constitution, we are called upon to reaffirm the fact that it was perhaps in Bonifacio’s, more than in any other’s time, that we first sought to lay the foundation of a just equitable and progressive Filipino society. The strong nationalist spirit, which animates a growing number of our countrymen today, makes it doubly incumbent upon us to come up with a new Constitution that will ensure the growth of that society.
Among other business, he granted executive clemency to 68 convicts, and smarted the sweeping reform of the country’s penal system with proposals to decongest Muntinlupa prison.
The President granted the pardons and commutations of sentence as a gesture marking the Holy Father’s visit here. The penal reforms have been part of the program of change the President had long envisioned, which he means to implement at this time with vigor.
Through the day, the President worked at his desk, except for brief breaks. He received no visitors.