Our first day with Bongbong. Woke up late believing he would not be able to awake early but he had breakfast with the two girls before seven o’clock.
Official Gazette for December 14, 1970: President Marcos, together with the First Lady, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos and their children Imee, Bongbong, and Irene, played Santa Claus in the afternoon to thousands of indigent children who were the special guests at the “Maligayang Pasko “70” children’s festival in Malacañang. The children, who arrived in dozens of buses as early as 2 p.m. come from 31 parishes and 26 closed institutions and orphanages in the Greater Manila area.
In the morning, the President conferred with Cabinet officials and Cavite provincial and city officials and civic leaders on the expected dislocation of some 1,424 Filipino workers who may be laid off from work with the reversion of the US Naval Base at Sangley Point to the Philippine government.
He also discussed with the Cavite leaders plans to transform Cavite City into an industrial city.
During the conference, the President directed:
1. Executive Secret-try Alejandro Melchor, Jr. and the Presidential Economic Staff to look into the feasibility of setting up labor-incentive industries in Cavite City; 2. Secretary of Labor Blas F. Ople to have a survey team from the Manpower Training Center conduct a census of the Sangley Point workers, classifying them according to the types of work they do, skills, and salaries, so that possible placement elsewhere would be facilitated; and 3. Commissioner of Public Highways Baltazar Aquino to submit in a week’s time a plan for tin construction of a coastal highway linking Cavite City to Manila directly.
Other major actions taken by the President was the suspension of the sale of tobacco in the PYTA, pending the creation of a Cabinet committee to handle the sale of PVTA tobacco stock.
He directed that such a committee be immediately constituted with the following members: Secretary of Finance. Secretary of Justice, the Auditor General or his representative, the PVTA General Manager, and a representative of the Liberal Party.
In the evening, the President inducted the new set of officers of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce. The President cited the work of the FFCCC in helping the government build and maintain a stable society. In his message to the Second Conference of LAWASIA, an organization of lawyers from different countries of Asia and the Western Pacific, the President said:
The Republic of the Philippines considers it a singular honor to be the host of the Second Conference of LAWASIA, an organization of lawyers from different countries of Asia and the Western Pacific. In behalf of the Filipino people, I convey our warm greetings to the conference delegates and our good wishes for their pleasant sojourn in our country.
It is well that an association of the scope of LAWASIA has been founded, because it has awakened in its members of diverse nationalities the consciousness of professional and regional kinship.
For the common concerns of lawyers, such as the just settlement of controversies and the preservation of social peace under law, constitute a noble mission that should transcend national boundaries, political creeds, and religious beliefs.
I hope that the realization of this identity in diversity will spark earnest efforts within the region to answer the need for new legal directions that will contribute to the betterment of socio-economic conditions in our part of the globe. Archaic legal doctrines must be radically overhauled to make them more progressive and vigorous instruments of human development, in keeping with the requirements of our time. “Law must be stable,” as Dean Roscoe Pound wisely observed, “but it cannot stand still.”
May this fresh awakening in Asia and the Western Pacific forge stronger bonds among the people of this region and open a new era of closer cooperation and understanding an.ong us in the sensitive area of law and justice.
He looked bored the whole morning as I attended to my visitors—Ambassador [Toshio] Urabe, Mrs. Adelina Rodriguez, the Cavite officials on Sangley Pt. (we decided to inform the American Ambassador we would like to see the turn-over take place finally after one year; we are going to set aside an area for a ship-building complex for Bayside Shipping which is being given reparations items this year and some electronics factories; but best of all finish the coastal road to Cavite City although we will have to wait for the case pending in the sala of Judge de la Rosa of the Pasay City Court of First Instance; the runway is only 8,000 feet long and therefore cannot be utilized for big planes).
In the afternoon we had the Christmas festival at 3:00 PM for the indigent children. Bongbong delivered the speech for the family party in Tagalog and partly in English—“Ikinagagalak kong pinahintulutan akong umuwi nang aking mga magulang at lumahok sa inyo sa mga araw ng kapaskuhan x x x This Christmas is doubly happy for me—It is the kind of happiness that I intensely wish for everyone—for you, all our people, and our country. x x x Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon sa inyong lahat.”
But again the hysterical explosion of greetings for Bongbong. “Guapo si Bongbong,” was the comment. Of course the girls were more excited than the boys. He received all of these as a matter of fact casually.
After the induction and dinner of the officers of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce led by Mr. Antonio Roxas Chua at which they pledge cooperation with my administration anew, I met [Felipe] Baby Ysmael at 7:15 PM. He brought an air rifle with tranquilizer darts. I asked Bongbong to come and help me get the gun working. He showed scarce interest and went back as fast as he could to his room to do recording.
I am amazed at the rapport between him and his sisters. Imee had faithfully written him every event that had happened here and now they seemed to have so much to talk about—classes, the idiosyncrasies of his “mawsters,” the characters in his school, what he thought of the Filipino boys in Worth (Iñigo Zobel who he says is known to be rich but thick [headed] and is always copying his homework and the Soriano boys who are on their third year in Worth; he does not think very highly of them). They talk of drama, Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and other writers.
Imelda and I just listen very fondly—too fondly I am afraid.
But he is more orderly in his habits, takes care of his room which used to be untidy before he went to Worth and seems shy with the girls.
Incidentally all the girls big and small wanted to meet him and shake his hand.
He seems decided not to go to Oxford after Worth but to go to the University of the Philippines instead for his law degree. Apparently, he is affected by his classmates who seem to think that Oxford was not much.
And anyway, he says, for him to go to Oxford, he would have to stay six years in Worth.
We are letting him make up his own mind. After all he seems to know what he wants.