February 18, 1971

Thursday

I have just had my teeth attended to by the dentist, Dr. Primo Gonzales, Chairman of the Board of Examiners of Dentistry and Capt. Paz as well as Dr. Maliksi who attended (the latter two in the Pres. Guards). My teeth that had been broken by my Japanese torturers in Fort Santiago recapped after the liberation and now chipped and broken by usage so much so they were beginning to pain me.

Painful but necessary.

Received the first volume of the Educational Survey by the commission appointed which is working at the expense of the World Bank which is also ready to finance the projects it will recommend.

Sec. O[nofre].D. Corpuz, the chairman, is sick and so the report had to be submitted by Ting [Sixto] Roxas.

Met the businessmen at the house of Jesus Cabarrus, this afternoon at 4:00-7:00 PM. The small and medium scale industry heads and the representatives of handicraft industries as ______.[1]

Sen. Pres. [Gil] Puyat is playing along with the crowd because he is also interested to run for President in 1973.

And money is his god. To make him, the multimillionaire, happy, all one has to do is to hand him a few thousand pesos.

It is his boast that he has not used his office for private gain. But he has become rich since he became a senator in 1949.

And he has always opposed taxes and tariff increases no matter how meritorious and even after he had committed himself in a caucus. But he is fast to go with the tide to support a tax bill in a spirit of self-abnegation when he realizes he can no longer stop it.

So in the past several years, he has put up the Manila Banking Corporation, a flour mill, plywood plant, a cemetery—the Manila Memorial, a huge multi-storied office building in Ayala Blvd. in Makati. He bought the Red V desiccated coconut and has increased his logging operations to include Indonesia.

He has not grown rich indeed in public office.

And he paid P52 only as income tax in the year 1960 and similar amounts thereafter.

10:00 PM February 19, 1971[2]

Friday

I ordered the criminal prosecution of the persons guilty for the smuggling of burley tobacco at the Currimao port. The 13 trucks that were caught on the road and brought to Camp Olivas then to Camp Aguinaldo had 40 drums filled up with burley tobacco. They belong to Mayor [Cirilo] Quilala and Felix Chua. But the old Tabacalera warehouse in Currimao in which they were originally stored and from which the trucks came still has more than 100 drums of burley tobacco. Col. [Fabian] Ver whom I sent there to investigate, locked the warehouse. But I have ordered the drums to be brought to ASAC.

But the warehouse is apparently owned by Congressman Simeon Valdez although it is in the name of a dummy, Cleto Agpaoan.

Mayor Quilala and Felix Chua claim that their trucks were merely hired and they were told that the drums contained pesticide. But if this were so why were the drums concealed in the Tabacalera warehouse in the town proper, many kilometers away from the pier where they could have been merely stacked in the open air.

The drums were consigned in Manila to Jose Evangelista Chua, a notorious smuggler.

Congressman Valdez tried to intervene to prevent a criminal prosecution. But I scolded him and ordered the prosecution anyway.

This is probably not the first time that they have smuggled into Currimao Port.

I had lunch with the House leadership, the House Appropriation committee, Ways and Means Chairman [Natalio] Castillo and the National Defense Chairman with the Secretary of National Defense.

They were threatening to cut the budget of the Department of National Defense.

So I had to reveal the plan for citizen training, how the Russians who met with the radicals of the Philippines and told them that the only true revolutionary is Marcos and he understands that for a revolution to succeed, the Armed Forces must be either demoralized or neutralized.

And I had to tell them of the ______.[3]

I invited Ex-Pres. [Carlos] Garcia to the Palace with Danny Gaviola, Talio Castillo, Bob Malasarte for a late merienda with Imelda. I wanted to know what he stood for.

He said he would seriously consider the unicameral legislature proposal but that he had expressed himself for a bicameral system four times.

He had not expressed himself on how to attain synchronization of elections (whether to cut the term of local officials or extend the term of members of Congress) although he had committed himself in his certificate of candidacy to synchronization. “I will broaden my studies on it,” he said.

As always he is slow-moving, undecided and unimpressive. It must be his age.

I wish we had a more vital leader for the constitutional convention.

Gen. [Eulogio] Balao and Sec. M. [Manuel] Salientes came in to see me on reparations and the Japanese loan for the Phil-Japan Highway.

Apparently the latter and Ambassador [Jose S.] Laurel [III] for Japan are making money on equipment procurement for the highway (10-20% of the cost).