2:10 AM Jan. 2, 1973
Imelda’s wound in the forearm is infected and the doctors may have to operate it—open it up to remove the sutures of catgut which because of the infection that may have reached the suture (at the cut of the tendon) is now a foreign body that must be removed to cure the infection.
We are all agitated by this because this is a most unhappy turn of events for the new year.
Official Gazette for January 1, 1973: PRESIDENT MARCOS issued the following New Year’s Day message to the Filipino people:
“It is my ardent wish and prayer that this New Year will find all our countrymen in high spirits and good cheer.
“The past year was a critical one for each of us and for our country. We were plagued by some of the worst threats to the very life of our democratic community. By the grace of God, with a firm will to action, and with a new solidarity among us, we survived the crisis. We embarked on a new path for our country. We face the future with high hopes.
“The advent of a new year signifies the birth of a new hope and purpose in our lives. It is at this time of year when the better impulses of our nature summon us to thoughts of turning failure into achievement, of making a good life better, of addressing our lives to higher goals and purposes.
“The year 1973 signifies a renewal that transcends all that every new year has come to mean to us in the past, as a people. For at the turn of 1972, we commenced a historic labor of transformation that touches all aspects of our individual lives and our national solidarity. We have brought change into our lives, regardless of obstacles placed in our path and without diffidence and irresolution.
“Today, we say there is new purpose and new meaning in our life as a people. Today, all of us know with sure and certain knowledge that tomorrow will be a better day.
“With full knowledge of what we can do and common resolve to give ourselves to the work at hand, I am certain that this new year will be happy and prosperous for everyone.”
MARKED ACCELERATION in construction work on the Philippine-Japan Friendship Highway Project has been effected after the proclamation of Martial Law, according to a year-end review by the Department of Public Works, Transportation and Communications. Bugged by a series of strong typhoons and the Central Luzon floods, work was slow immediately before Proclamation No. 1081. After Sept. 23, however, said the year-end review, the construction of the 2,076-kilometer long trans-Philippine highway was accelerated. What helped were the following: stabilized peace and order, favorable construction weather, weeding out of non-complying contractors, restructuring of management personnel engaged in the project, actual dismissals, and allocation of more sections to district and city engineering offices.
SOME P96.8 MILLION worth of contraband items was apprehended by government anti-smuggling agencies from January to December 1972. In a year-end assessment on the accomplishments of the bureaus and offices under the Department of Finance, Secretary Cesar E. A. Virata disclosed the exact value of seized smuggled goods from January to December 1972 as reported by the Anti-Smuggling Action Center was P96,882,264.14. The amount of P96.8 million in apprehended contraband items was mostly blue-seal cigarets, illegally exported logs, PX and other commodities and prohibited drugs.
PHILIPPINE MEDICAL CARE Commission considers the deep confidence on the Medicare Program which the PMCC has successfully established as its most significant achievement during the year. Mr. Pacifico E. Marcos, medicare chairman, said that 1972 has been a turbulent year for the Medicare Program due to the fact that it was initially implemented in this year (the benefits became available in April) when powerful forces went all out to try to blunt it into ineffectivity. Dr. Marcos said that some segments of the population openly came out to oppose the program: some members of the medical profession who feared that medicare would adversely affect medical practice. Fortunately, he said, this thinking in the medical profession was an insignificant minority. He said that the program has not only generally increased the income of Filipino physicians front medical practice but it has in fact multiplied it.
But the doctors have irrigated the wound with a new anti-biotic. Imelda has treated it with an old unguent and tonight it was not suppurating pus but bleeding.
We should know by tomorrow.
Eng. Mario Sison, one of the confidants of Sergio Osmeña Jr., has confessed that Osmeña received P860,000 as financial aid from Tun Mustapha for the 1969 elections for the settlement of the Sabah claim; that even after the defeat of Osmeña they visited Sabah to settle the Sabah claim.
I attach report and affidavit.