Have just finished a conference with SND [Secretary of National Defense], J-2 [Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence], 1st PC Zone Commander and his S-2 Col. Tomas Diaz, on an assessment.
All the present books on counter-subversion and counter insurgency do not deal with our peculiar problem that is distinguished by a highly sophisticated use by the subversives of media, the schools, the church labor, peasants and even industrialists in a massive scale. This is not just the 1950 struggle, it is more insidious and perhaps more pervasive. The same objective, the same motivation but more finesse, more articulate eloquence, more propaganda, more intellectuals, more open activism in front organizations—but less arms.
This may be Maoist but it is not based on the Maoist doctrine of the rural areas being the base on the peasants and not the proletariat as the men of the revolution.
So the counter-action must equally be more sophisticated.
Traditionally the peasants while shown the strength of the Armed Forces, must be given an alternative to communism. In 1950 this was the Edcor [Economic Development Corps] and the resettlement projects and some government reforms. Today it is the Magalang Agricultural Community Development Project, Tulungan and the Integrated Social Welfare Program, economic development, CIR [Court of Industrial Relations] and CAR [Court of Agrarian Relations] renovations, mobile courts and land reform.
Official Gazette for April 19, 1970: President Marcos concentrated on urgent matters of state, going over reports from a number of government agencies, and acted on official papers. The pressure of desk work, forced the President to ask Secretary of Justice Felix V. Makasiar, to deliver for him his speech at a conference of judges of courts of first instance.
In his speech, the President underscored the importance of fair and efficient administration of justice as a means of insuring peace and order which, he said, were so necessary to the growth and survival of a democratic society. “It is only when the citizens are assured that justice within their concent of government is unassailable that peace and order will reign unbroken,” he said. The President said that the success of a democracy rests on the ability of its citizens to obey the laws. Without an orderly society, no democratic nation can flourish, he said. “When a free society comes to the point where order no longer holds, then we can be sure that the very system will collapse,” he said. “Then the forces of disorder will take over, and this usually means the employment of the instruments of repression, of force, such as we see employed in police states.”