God forbid we will ever be another Vietnam. Amb. Pham Dang Lam explained to me that the US through Dr. [Henry] Kissinger just went ahead and entered into an agreement with Le Due Tho of North Vietnam without any guarranty [sic] that North Vietnamese troops would withdraw from South Vietnam; Hanoi still imposes the same conditions of a coalition government calling it by another name “administrative machinery”; nor is there a recognition of the 17th parallel as a division line between the two Vietnams.
They never knew about the negotiations until the 18th of October. Poor South Vietnam.
I attach the notes I took of the conference.
Imelda is still in pain. They had to bring her to the clinic of Dr. Primo Gonzales for a check on the nerve of her lower right molars. Dr. [Serafin] Punsalang found the gums swollen. So they have tried anti-biotics. If the pain does not subside by tomorrow the dentists will have to pull off the last lower right molar which is not being used anyway because the upper molar was pulled out some time ago.
I have agreed in principle to the organization of three additional battalions in the Phil. Army within the programmed expenditure of P216 million for the P.A.
Official Gazette for October 29, 1972: WHEN PRESIDENT Marcos promulgated Decree No. 27 on Oct. 21 declaring the whole country a land reform area, he virtually released hundreds of thousands of agricultural tenants of rice and corn lands from perpetual bondage. From now on, the lowly tenants, whether in big landed estates or not, are freed from economic fetters which have shackled them for centuries. They will now be able to reign supreme over the tract of land on which they have built now-dilapidated nipa shacks for their families.
The tenants are now freed from the stranglehold of unscrupulous landlords and usurers who have buried them and their children neck-deep in debt. Most important of all, they will no longer labor under the constant fear of ejection from the land they are tilling, so that by hard work, their children will no longer inherit ignorance. They will be able to send their children to school so that they “might rise to higher levels of hope, ambition and competence . . . achievement and power.”
Some 61,00 farmers cultivating 188,00 hectares of land and 155 cooperative associations were extended loans worth P45.13 million by the Agricultural Credit Administration during the fiscal year which ended last June 30. This amount represents an increase of P2.44 million over that of last year’s. The categories of ACA disbursements were: production loans. P33.43 million; commodity loans, P6.31 million; marketing loans, P 4.81 million; and facility loans, P575,352. Of the total number of farmers granted loans, P38,000 were leasehold tenants covered by the government’s land reform program, while 13,000 were farmers in pre-land reform areas involved in the increase food production program under the supervision of the National Food and Agricultural Council.
South Vietnamese Ambassador Pham Dang Lam, on the first leg of his trip to Asian countries to brief Saigon’s allies on the Vietnam war situation, was received by President Marcos at Malacañang. The ambassador handed the President a letter from South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.