Official Gazette for June 24, 1971: President Marcos reiterated his call for “improved honesty, efficiency, initiative and courtesy in the public service” in a speech on the opening of the 11th general convention of the Confederation of Government Employees held at the capitol building in Pasig, Rizal.
The President, at the same time, pledged that he would continue to “hold uppermost, within the means of our government, the happiness and well-being of all government employees.”
The President asserted that it is the rank and file of government employees that serve as a link between the government and the people. “In effect, the performance of the government is your performance,” he said and added that the government is not what the President, or Congress or the Supreme Court makes it but is what the rank and file employees make it. “I call on you to be honest, morally and intellectually, which means doing your functions and duties efficiently and without regard to any ulterior consideration,” he added.
With no scheduled callers to attend to the President concentrated on deskwork. Among other actions, he created a coordinating committee for nuclear power study, ‘which will look into the feasibility, in all its aspects, of establishing a nuclear power plant in the Philippines before the end of this decade. An agreement in principle has been entered into by the National Power Corporation (NPC) and the Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) for the integrated planning of capacity additions to the Luzon Grid.
Named to compose the coordinating committee were the commissioner of the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission, as chairman; and the assistant general manager of the National Power Corporation, the deputy director-general for operations of the Presidential Economic Staff, and the director of the Office of Foreign Aid Coordination, National Economic Council, as members.
Issued earlier by the President was the following message on the 400th anniversary of the formal organization of Manila as a Christian city: The 400th anniversary of Manila as a Christian city comes at a time when the Philippines is poised to enter a new era, a period characterized by ferment and debate, an outward reaching out as well as an inward search for identity and direction. All these manifestations are sharply reflected in Manila, which has always been the central nervous system of the nation, and for more than three centuries the cultural, economic and political capital of this archipelago.
Today Manila has the image and pulsebeat of a modern city, vet different from similar metropolises in that somehow it has retained the increments of history and the distinct substance of the Filipino.
This is only right for we need, among other imperatives, to assert our uniqueness as a people, to keep alive our history as a nation, because there is a real danger of losing our identity in a world more and more growing impersonal and insensitive. I welcome therefore the efforts to perpetuate in Manila the Filipino essence, perhaps best exemplified by Andres Bonifacio, happily enshrined as the city’s emblem of Filipinism, who possessed the rugged individualism, the sturdy virtue, the affinity to the land, the love of freedom which define and animate the Filipino.
As the nation grows and develops, Manila will surely pace the rest of the country as it has done in times past, thereby posing new challenges not only to the city’s leaders but to its population, a puplation which is, properly, a cross-section of the nation’s inhabitants, affirming once again the central place Manila enjoys in the life of the Philippines.
It is my pleasure indeed to extend congratulations to the people of Manila and to its energetic leaders, beginning with Mavor Villegas with the hope that the next decade will be the most dynamic and significant period of growth for Manila, for it is the period when Manilans working together and spurred by; the same great dreams can bring about a renascence of their City, perhaps to surpass the progress it has made in all the centuries past.
In a conference in the evening with a team he had dispatched to Cotabato to verify reports of mass killings in the area, the President directed Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile to deploy a batallion combat team in Cotabato to conduct a search and destroy operation against outlaw bands responsible for the loss of lives and. property in the area. The team, composed of Secretary Enrile, Rep. Constantino Navarro of Surigao del Norte, who is chairman of the House committee on defense; and Rep. Ali Dimaporo of Lanao del Norte, president of the Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan Association (Minsupala); returned to Manila late in the afternoon and rendered its report to the President.
During the conference, the President also ordered, among others:
Upon the arrival of Sec. [Juan] Ponce Enrile, Congs. [Mohammad] Ali Dimaporo and Uging [Constantino] Navarro I received a confirmation of their advance telegraphic report of the violence uncontrolled by the constabulary in Northern Cotabato (Carmen where the massacre of 61 Muslims by the “Ilagas”’ at Barrio Manalili took place and Pikit where 45 houses of Christians were burned in tum by the Muslims in Barrio Gli-Gly).
So I ordered the saturation of Northern Cotabato with Armed Forces troops, one battalion combat team with heavy weapons support to come from Cagayan de Oro immediately to prepare the organization of a task force independent of the Provincial PC [Philippine Constabulary] command.
The task force is under orders to locate all armed groups, whether Christian or Muslim, apprehend them or destroy them without distinction.
All Ilongos and Cotabato Muslims (officers and men) have been ordered withdrawn from Cotabato.
Not martial law but the use of the Armed Forces to suppress disorder.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Sen. Dominador Aytona, announced that his committee will cut my powers to transfer funds, augment appropriations in the various executive departments etc., the general idea being to cripple me.
Sen. Aytona is the brains of the Jacintos on the IISMI [Iligan Integrated Steel Mills Inc.]. He wants me to order the lifting of the foreclosure order of the DBP [Development Bank of the Philippines] on the IISMI for delinquency in the payment of DBP advances. He is facing charges of Anti-Graft for conflict of interest in the National Economic Council where he appeared as the lawyer of the IISMI. And the Jacintos stand to lose all their investments in the IISMI because of the foreclosure.
This is the reason for his opposition to my program of government.
He is one of the wolves in sheep’s clothing in government.
Another one is Sen. Alejandro Almendras. And the third is Sen. Wenceslao Lagumbay.
First, The Department of Health to dispatch medical teams to minister to the health needs of refugees, and the Department of Social Welfare to send relief teams to locate and attend to the relief requirements of evacuees and assist in their relocation in suitable resettlement centers, pending normalization of conditions in the region; Second, The disbandment of the Cotabato Peace Commission previously created to help restore peace in the province. The commission had been found to be ineffective.
In dispatching a batallion combat team to the area, the President said the government has no other alternative but to saturate the area with troopers in order to put a stop to what he considered senseless killings and destruction of property in the province. He observed that the warring groups in the province had violated agreements entered into with the President in a series of meetings at Malacañang to police their own ranks, disarm their men, and refrain from resorting to violence as a means of resolving their conflicts.
They have been dealing with the Liberals.