What worries me most now is [are] the prices and the apparent scarcity of essentials. We set aside $2 million monthly for essentials beginning January, and this was at the old rate. And yet there seems to be scarcity. I have asked Sec. Leo[nides] Virata to get together with Greg[orio] Licaros to bring in essentials through Namarco [National Marketing Corporation] which must be reactivated if necessary. Even in the provinces, soap and sardines seem to be deficient. If this is not attended to, this could be a cause for disorders. And reports indicate the Chinese are hoarding. The communists could very well be in this too. This bears watching.
Imelda brought the children and the Martel and Kokoy [Benjamin] Romualdez families to Pagsanjan, up the rapids under the falls and down again. They apparently enjoyed the trip. Stayed at Malacañang to finish my work and think after reading the book The Strategy of Deception: a study in worldwide communist tactics by Jeane J. Kirpatrick. Her thesis is the alleged inevitable class struggle and victory of the proletarian class has been disproved by history and that Communists in practice are less doctrine than expedient. Theirs is realpolitik, less ideology. All they seek, in short is power, no matter what and the liberal democrats should meet them with the same objectivity and reality. The book disproves every single theory of Marx.
Official Gazette for March 8, 1970: President Marcos devoted his time, as is usual on weekends, working on state papers during which he received no callers except for government officials and close aides whom he called for consultation. In a message issued on the eve of the birth anniversary of Dr. Jose P. Laurel, the President said:
“Today, many years after his passing, we find the voice of Senator Jose P. Laurel still strong and relevant to our gravest concerns as a people. Today’s clamor for change recall much of what Senator Laurel had first and consistently brought before the high councils of our nation. Senator Laurel sought a change in the course of the nation not out of forlorn hope of coming doom, but out of an infinite faith in the capacity of the Filipinos to fulfill their destiny as a free and democratic people. We are now called upon to heed his admonition, especially his advocacy of peaceful and democratic action towards a new and freer Philippines.”