We have all done our Christmas gift choosing. I asked Kokoy [Benjamin Romualdez] to buy some warm clothes in the United States for Bongbong: fur-lined boots, gloves and jackets—including a Coleman pressure heater, the latest shirts, trousers and belts (I have ordered a gold huge buckle for him and had my Argentinian calf-skin complete with hair, redone by my tailor to fit him) and have ordered some things from Hongkong through Helen Cu-Unjieng. I am giving Meldy and the girls some jewelry.
And we have decided on a cruise on Christmas. We board the 777 after the dinner in Malacañang when all the relatives gather and receive our wishes and gifts—then a nine and a half hours [sic] trip to Sablayan, Mindoro and from there a twenty four hour trip to Iligan or Baloi Airport to where I will be ferried by helicopter (the Sikorsky Amphibian which we will carry on the deck of the 777). I am supposed to fly to Cotabato to reach there at 8:00 AM, Dec. 27, 1970. There we hold a peace conference up to 9:30 AM when I fly back to Baloi then motor overland to Marawi where we are supposed to arrive at 11:00 AM. We stay there up to the evening when we motor back to Iligan, board the ship and cruise back to Manila (36 hours).
This will be different from the sterile Christmases we have spent in the Palace opening gifts.
We will go hunting in Sablayan and meet the barrio people.
As the year ends, I cannot but assess the gains and the losses of 1970.
This has been a year of crisis and trial. We have had a monetary crisis (which as the French have slyly observed was caused by the short-term loans from the Americans, so they the Americans should assume the burden of solving it); a crisis that resulted in the
Official Gazette for December 23, 1970: President Marcos constituted the Committee on Presidential Award in Education even as he continued concentrating on desk work and other matters of state.
In an executive order that he issued from his desk, the President designated Secretary of Foreign Affairs Carlos P. Romulo and Julieta Benedicto as members of the award committee. The executive order provides for the designation of the incumbent Secretary of Education as chairman, and a former secretary of education and an outstanding citizen as members. The Presidential Award in Education will be granted to citizens who have made significant and distinctive contribution to education in the country.
Among other actions, the President appointed three municipal judges, two registers of deeds, one clerk of court of the Court of First Instance, and a city treasurer. Appointed ad interim Municipal Judges were Adelaida Centeno Salon, for Cabugao, IIocos Sur, Silverio C. de Leon, for Makilala, Cotabato; and; Benjamin S. Abalos, for Pasig, Rizal. Designated acting registers of deeds were Santiago Bautista, Jr. of San Jose City and Isabel G. Ibad of Cotabato City. Named acting City Treasurer was Virgilio B. Buendia of Batangas City, while Jose L. Magpali was appointed ad interim clerk of court of the Court of First Instance of Pangasinan
discarding of a legal rate of exchange for the floating rate in February in the middle of the riots, demonstrators and threatened rebellion as well as plots for my assassination and a coup de’etat [sic]; soaring prices and wages; a curtailment of government expenses and of credit resulting in a slowing of economic activity; the stoppage of public works and a corresponding disaffection of the people who find a livelihood in them; the worst floods and typhoon in history that have rendered hundreds of thousands homeless and farms as well as industries paralyzed.
And we have come up from a $300 million deficit of last year to a $35 million surplus in our balance of payments by the end of the year. The HMBs [Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan] and NPA’s [New People’s Army] are on the run, demonstrations are tamed down to placard-carrying with an occasional Molotov cocktail. The minimum wage was increased from P6 to P8 daily in industrial areas without any serious disruptions. We are slowly resuming the industrial pace and working out solutions for land disputes. Our government and banks are once again guaranteeing foreign loans for export-oriented industries. We are issuing credit cards for the reconstruction of damage hospitals and school buildings.
And I have increased the tariff duties on crude oil and “other items” to raise a possible additional income for the general fund of P60 million.
With the US AID [Agency for International Development] support of P200 million, reparations from Japan of P200 million and outright cash from the government of P200 million, we will now go full blast on a P600 million national electrification program.
The same thing is true of cooperatives and exports.
There are those like [Teodoro] Locsin of the Phil. Free Press who feel that there will be chaos in the Philippines. They are all being proven wrong. But they die hard. And they will continuously befoul the atmosphere hoping that thus they will not be too far wrong.
But we will have to push on resolutely and determinedly, take the beatings from the cynics as well as we can preferably in silence as even the tranquilizing medication of a reply is a luxury we can no longer afford given the schizophrenic press that we have.
“There is a campaign of hate being waged against you,” Delegate-elect Vincent Recto exclaimed to me, “and you must do something about this.” “This [sic] young upstarts,” (referring to the student demonstrators), Don Manolo Elizalde told me, “must not be allowed to insult the Presidency and the President. “I wondered amazedly if he expected me to shoot them down to silence them. But this was probably his way of remonstrating with me on my policy of encouraging demonstrators and asking everyone to speak out their minds freely.
Yes, a campaign of hate actually starts when you aspire for the presidency or for that matter gain some degree of prominence and acquire any possibility of becoming president. And you will just have to absorb all the blows thrown at you and keep on moving towards your objective.
After serious study, I find no reason to fear the demonstrators (even the radicals) and the HMB’s or NPA’s. They serve the purpose of keeping our people reminded that we must reform for the better if we would keep our heads.
They may harass, but that is all they can do. We must not allow the harassment to weaken our will nor lessen our pace nor deflect our purpose and line of progress.
The development program is still the principal occupancy. We must devote most of our energies and our resources to it. We must not be pricked and baited into abandoning it or suspending it.
This is why I am concerned about the complacent conservation and old-school lethargy and orthodoxy of my cabinet members specially the Secretary of Finance.
We have to push them into new ingenuity and initiative. Otherwise we will stagnate—holding on to the sterile paper balances of accounts in the government budget.
We will have to start priming the economy soon or we will have the symptoms of recession that they now have in the United States.