Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford II gave me an old civil war breech-loading gun and Imelda a Steuben glass display. They were brought by Mr. and Mrs. Wills (He is the Vice President of the Ford Co.) and Mr. Foran, the local Ford executive.
The Ford Co. is pulling up an automobile factory of $28 million for the stamping of auto bodies. And they will tie up with another company for the engine block.
GM [General Motors] is also setting up a factory.
So is Toyota and Nissan.
This comes from my setting up the guidelines for automobile manufacture with BOI [Board of Investments] incentives. These include the requirement that an engine block and 50% of spare parts must be manufactured in 3 years.
I leave it to BOI to encourage either lateral or vertical integration.
Official Gazette for May 6, 1971: President Marcos received retired Supreme Court Justice Conrado Sanchez, who called to formally accept the chairmanship of the special commission inquiring into the demonstration violence in the past, and into the more recent May 1 incident. The call was one of many made on the President during the day by various officials.
Aside from receiving callers, the President as usual took time to attend to official papers and other urgent state business. Among others, he signed the bill setting aside an outlay for financing the 5th World Anti-Communist League and 17th Asian People’s Anti-Communist conferences scheduled to be jointly held from July 21 to 25 in Manila, with the Philippines as host. Most of the President’s callers were local officials from the Visayas and Mindanao, who consulted him on problems affecting their constituencies.
In response to the requests for fund aid by the local executives, the President directed Budget Commissioner Faustino Sy-Changco and Undersecretary of Finance Pedro Almanzor to attend to them.
Among those who called were: Governors Henry Y. Regalado of Misamis Occidental, Cornelio Villareal, Jr. of Capiz, Linang Mandangan of Lanao del Sur, Jose B. Legaspi of Aklan, Verulo Boiser of Davao del Norte, Virginio Lacaya of Zamboanga del Norte; Lt. Gov. Antonio Ortiz of Guimaras (Iloilo);
City Mayors Leroy S. Brown of Basilan, Silverio Osin of Butuan. Germanico Carreon of Dapitan, Elias Lopez of Davao, Felicisimo Herrera of Mandaue, Benjamin F. Arao of Pagadian, Sofronio Carmona of San Carlos and Joaquin F. Enriquez, Jr. of Zamboanga. The President also directed Commissioner Sy-Changco to expedite releases of funds so that various local projects could be completed before the rainy season sets in.
Later in the afternoon, the President resumed his paper work, during which he: 1. Certified to the Senate and the House of Representatives the bills seeking to rehabilitate and modernize the Philippine National Railways, through the amendment of the PNR charter. 2. Submitted to the Commission on Appointments for confirmation seven nominations to government posts. 3. Designated Undersecretary Jose D. Drilon, Jr. as acting Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources during the absence of Secretary Arturo R. Tanco, Jr., who left for Kuala Lumpur to attend the ministerial meeting of the Association of South East Asian nations. 4. Declared May 7 a special public holiday in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Sulu, in the cities of Basilan, Marawi and Iligan, in connection with the Muslim Feast of “Maulid-din-Nabi.”
On the IISMI [Iligan Integrated Steel Mills Inc.], the Jacintos with Sen. [Dominador] Aytona and Cong. [Mohamad] Ali Dimaporo came to see me. I had called [Leonides] Leo Virata, [Gregorio] Greg Licaros and [Vicente] Ting Paterno so we could finalize action.
The alternatives of action are:
- Outright foreclosure for non-payment of amortization.
- Conversion of preferred shares which is 30% of the equity and the outright loans for control of the majority of the stocks.
I gave them up to Monday to come to some kind of agreement.
We are also concerned about the news that both the German Reichmark [Deutsche Mark] and the Japanese Yen are due to be revalued. This will mean that our loans if in these currencies may be also revalued up. But we have loans in dollars so that we would not be too severely affected.
However, we are sure that the prices of our imports from these countries would go up if their currencies are revalued. So we are hurrying up all the projects in which the two countries are supplying equipment or machineries.
I met the leaders of the House for dinner tonight. Tomorrow we meet the senators (NP [Nacionalista Party]) at the Puyat penthouse at the Manila Banking. All the NP senators, including those who have been hostile are invited.
The move to oust Puyat is supposed to be led off by an anti-Marcos resolution to be signed by many of the NP senators.
These are same people who come begging for patronage and support during elections and whom we have spent both time and money.
They now keep attacking me in the Senate.
I attach the newspapers today.