Ferdinand Marcos

“ We plan the economy to benefit the social needs of our citizens.
In this vein, we have addressed the development program to respond to the social needs of our people. The social programs which recur in every sectoral plan for the economy is designed to cut unemployment, boost incomes, elevate living and health standards, and provide essential utilities like power and water in the rural areas.
Through an all-out strategy of land reform, land distribution, food produc­tion campaigns and general welfare projects, the social programs all hope to eliminate the prime sources of social discontent. ”

“ In this decade of energy scarcity, energy has become a common, although not a unifying, interest among developed as well as developing nations, of producers and consumers, of brilliant and common, ordinary men. To be sure, the oil crisis as we know it today is not mankind’s first recorded encounter with something we can call an energy crisis. And it may well not be its last. Man has experienced the energy crisis in many forms in the past ”

“ Equally vital to a sound employment situation is the development of our human resources through education and manpower training. This social pro­gram represents today one of the heaviest commitments of government, and it will continue to be a high priority in the new Five-Year Plan. I commend this priority program to this assembly. ”

“ In police administrative cases, the Police Commission received a total of 630 cases. As a result, 101 policemen were dismissed and 21 were suspended.
14. Community development projects increased by 427 per cent. This increment has benefited more than six million people. For 128,158 self-help projects, the government provided assistance in the amount of P47.5 million. During the four years of the past Administration, P13.3 million were given to aid 24,306 community development projects. ”

“ A lesson that we can learn from our past experience is simple: The impru­dence of being overly dependent on one key product or fuel. The petroleum story of the 70s appears no different from the past, so that it almost seemed natural that the world economy, functioning under the virtual monopoly of petroleum, had to stumble upon the crisis.
We have learned a lesson well, and our efforts are only limited by time as well as resources. To date, the government supplies 145,000 barrels per day or 64 percent of the country’s total oil requirements. ”

“ We have dutifully ploughed back our earnings as a nation to the tasks of development. We have become a more disciplined and far-sighted nation. We devote 60 per cent of our budget to social and economic development. A more dramatic index of our new orientation towards production rather than consumption is this fact: up to 84 per cent of our imports in the previous year consisted of capital goods, reversing the traditional proportion of non-essential to essential importations. ”

“ The experience of the past three years, combining a number of small and big breakthroughs in our national life, shows that the central factor for our progress is still the Filipino; that the Filipino transformed means a nation transformed; that the limit of what we can achieve for ourselves are fundamentally a matter of character — a moral and spiritual limitation,
Although the achievements in rice production, education and industrializa­tion have an undeniable material basis, their common significance is moral and spiritual. ”

“ About 72 per cent of tax revenues are from indirect taxes; the remaining 28 per cent come from direct taxes. This must now be revised.
A realistic tax program, one attuned to the development requirements as well as the structure of our society, is now imperative. We must produce a system which would not only increase tax revenues for financing intensified government action in economic development but also distribute the tax burden fairly and justly. The rich, rather than the poor, should bear the greater weight of the tax responsibility. ”

“ As I have said before on the use of Asian methods to solve Asian problems, we will now mobilize on a nationwide basis, both in the rural and the urban areas, the Filipino method of dispersed family producers with a central management, financing, and marketing direction.
This should be so massive that it will reach every home wherein there are idle hands.
The NACIDA and private sector operators will be the principal instrument of this massive, self-employment scheme.
Electrification
One of the principal problems of production is the inadequacy of power. ”

“ A massive housing program for low-income groups will be launched under a coordinated leadership with various agencies of the government taking part. An energetic thrust in the field of manpower training will be carried out, to upgrade our labor skills and meet the growing needs of business and industry for technicians and skilled hands. We shall engage in a vigorous campaign for the promotion of Philippine export products to realize an increased amount of foreign exchange needed to provide the import requirements of our growing economy. ”

“ The pattern of development that we have chosen is the balanced develop­ment of both agriculture and industry. At this stage of our economic develop­ment, agriculture is an important support because it generates both the capital and the capability for industrialization. Our main export products, which earn the foreign exchange that we need to buy capital equipment, are still agri­cultural products. The complete neglect of agriculture now will only set back our plans for the industrialization of the economy. ”

“ We need 470,000 dwellings a year: 100,000 in the cities and 370,000 in the rural areas. This means building 10 to 12 dwellings a year per 1,000 people, but unfortunately our dwelling construction averaged only two to three units a year per 1,000 people during the last 10 years.
This statistical statement hardly projects the human significance of our housing problem. In human terms the problem means sprawling squatter areas—vast pockets of poverty, ignorance and disease which debase, pervert and stultify their inhabitants. ”

“ We have increased the general fund support for state colleges and universities by 30 per cent, the highest in our history.
We have organized a fund for assistance to private education, which provides grants, loans, and other aid to im­prove the facilities and raise the quality of instruction and research in our private higher education institutions.
We have, for the first time in our history, organized an education planning office to rationalize the management of our educational system by developing a systems approach to education and thereby relating it to our needs and resources. ”

“ The redirection of credit to priority areas in agriculture, agrarian reform, exports and small scale industries, created for monetary policy a progressive new role in social and economic reform.
Today, a significant part of growth is steadily being channeled towards further economic activities. Domestic and foreign investors continue to have a strong confidence in the growth prospects of the national economy.
Now let me go to social equity.
In the fulfillment of our development vision, we make it a precondition that the security and well-being of our people must come first. ”

“ It has been our experience that political power resides as it did in the political broker of old and not in the people when the farmer is not organized, or the worker is not organized or the barangay is not organized, or major sectors of our society to organize the masses in their communities and in their sectors, we cannot achieve complete participatory democracy. Third: The struggle for national development, for true and complete freedom and human rights, must be waged and won in the rural areas more than anywhere else. ”

“ For the year 1968, the relative percentages of imports of producer and consumer goods were 88.3 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively.
Thus the trade imbalance has been largely brought about by the expanding industrial development of the country. However, there is a built-in correction in the imbalance, for once these industries begin to produce with the equipment imported, they will augment their own domestic requirements, substitute the goods currently imported and provide a surplus for export. ”

“ Without a single exception, professional social workers speak of the integrated social program as a milestone, a breakthrough, moving relentlessly towards a reorientation of the entire welfare movement in our country. ”

“ If we concede it our duty to attain unity of purpose and of will to succeed, then we must now rid our ranks of these unreformed men. Let all kinship and friendship in the democratic revolution now receive guidance from the philosophy and purpose of our revolution. Those who continue against the moral substance of our reforms must now answer to our people. And thus, I have chosen this forum for you, who represent the people more than any other body. Let them answer to you then, to you the people’s assemblies, the barangays. ”

“ These firms were allowed to open automatically letters of credit equivalent to 55 per cent of their 1968 importations, spread out on a quarterly basis.
For the long run, in order to revise the production patterns of the economy, measures have been devised to promote a more outward-looking, export-oriented type of development. In cooperation with other government agencies, the Central Bank stands ready to adopt additional facilities for export industries. With the support given to these industries, the heavy dependence of the economy on imports should be reduced. ”

“ Nevertheless, a relentless program to combat crime has been pursued.
We have intensified police training. Besides a national police academy, we have six regional training schools to professionalize police agencies around the country. They will train and graduate policemen at the rate of 1,000 per quarter. This is being done without Congress providing funds for them.
Peace and order has always been a responsibility of local government. This has limited the ability of the national government to deal directly with local crime. ”

“ Every person, literate or not, fifteen years of age or over, who has resided in the barrio, barangay or district for at least six months and who is a Filipino citizen must register with any of the registration officers of the barrio, barangay or district where he resides: Provided, however, That any person who on account of his profession or calling may not be able to register in his barrio, barangay or district may register in the barrio, barangay or district where he is temporarily residing. ”

“ Even in the face of threats from some sectors and dire predictions of failure, we declared the second district of Pam­panga a land reform area. In the past, land reform was limited to a very few scattered municipalities.
Last year, we saw the Armed Forces transformed into a large creative force for our social and economic development. The AFP today is a strong catalyst in our drive to build and change our society. A brigade consisting of ten construc­tion battalions has been formed. The soldier, too, has become a builder.
Our Administration has moved swiftly and courageously into conservation. ”

“ Before the year ends, we expect to complete the Manila and suburbs interim waterworks projects. We will also construct 65 more provincial waterworks systems. Studies are now being made to increase the capacity of the Manila and suburbs interim waterworks projects to meet the fast-growing needs of the area. Simultaneously, a master plan for a sewerage system for the metropolitan area is being prepared. ”

“ Any person who, without or against the lawful order of the Commission, holds or causes the holding of a referendum on a day other than that fixed by law or by the Commission, or stops a referendum being legally held, or who holds a referendum not legally authorized ”

“ It remains our fundamental policy that private enterprise must serve as our primary agent in the realization of economic achievement, and government must enter only those areas of economic endeavor in which private enterprise is not prepared or able to service needs and meet desired targets.
But let me remind everyone that while we encourage private enterprise and initiative and recognize it and oppose the abolition of private property, the Constitution requires that the government regulate wealth in the interest of the general welfare. ”

“ Casting of votes. — Voting shall be by secret ballot which shall be conducted in the barangay center designated by the Commission. It shall start promptly at seven o'clock in the morning and close at six o'clock in the afternoon.
Each voter shall have the right to vote in the order of his entrance to the barangay center, identifying himself to the barangay referendum committee, who will check his name against the barangay list. ”

“ We had 1.5 million high school students and 640,000 college and university students. Our school population of 8.4 million exceeded the total national population of 60 other countries of the world. The schools and studentry were mobilized for development projects, especially for massive tree-planting and civic action activities. ”