Ferdinand Marcos

“ Today, we stand proud as a nation. Today, we turn a page in history. We celebrate the fourth year of martial law with the first session of the Batasang Bayan. We have succeeded to survive and prevail over crisis after crisis. The deterioration of our society threatened by the rebellion four years ago, the secessionism in the south as well as the criminality and anarchy over the land were aborted through the exercise of political will.
The nation stands and the New Society exists, able to cope with adversity and vicissitudes. ”

“ By 1985, we should succeed in reducing the population growth rate to about 2.4 per cent, if not less, and in eliminating wasteful and dangerous consumption habits particularly in food, energy, space, water and air.
We should in all aspects of our national life seek to promote more vigorously the ethic of self-reliance, from security to technology, from agricultural to industrial production.
As I see it, this decade and the next will set the stage for expanding our country’s productive infrastructure. ”

“ And beyond the piecemeal efforts toward social change that had marked our history since independence, we undertook bold programs to create and redistribute both wealth and opportunity, to dismantle the system of privilege that favored the rich and powerful and to encourage the productive participation of millions. ”

“ We have moved forward making considerable gains in areas where many other nations are meeting difficulty. We have arrested the drift and the internal collapse of our society and have recovered a new sense of direction and purpose, with the visible support of the majority. Where the claims of contending interests and ideologies previously threatened to rend apart our society, today we stand strong at the center, able to rationally reconcile differences, rationalize our decisions, and take determined, concerted actions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Public corporations should encourage greater public participation, and local participation in the decision-making process should continue to broaden.
To keep pace with the changing rural to urban profile of our communities, we must exert every effort to liberate these communities from blight, conges-lion, and hazards; bring about the optimum use of land as a welfare rather than as a commodity for trade; preserve a desirable balance between the natural beauty of our land and waters on the one land and the claims of technology on the other ”

“ All the sound and glossy qualities of democratic process that marked our political life for generations were merely the crust of an unequal political order which proved finally unable to respond to national realities and problems. ”

“ We have attempted to show as I have already said, that grievances whether economic, social or political can be redressed by a society with one purpose, and that is, to give social dimension to its progress and advancement.
We have integrated all the police forces of the country, the Integrated National Police Force. And from a national perspective, our national civilian police system has the capability to react with considerable efficiency and sophistication to any reasonable volume of crimes. ”

“ Along with these basic reforms towards social transformation, we have expanded the level of social services in education, health and nutrition, family planning, housing and environmental planning. All of our programs are in line with the entire development effort.
In education, we have begun the fundamental realignment of our educational system towards the manpower requirements of development, the upgrading of the quality of education, and the full democratization of educational opportunity.
No child today is deprived of the opportunity to learn. ”

“ By 1980, we should expect the basic infrastructure of growth to be completed, linking the fanner, the small industries and the consumers to the total domestic economy. By the year 2000, we should have attained our objective of integrating our socially fragmented nation, through our socio-economic and political programs, the development or adoption of institutions and appropriate technologies to ensure standards of harmony and well-being within the national community.
At the end of the millennium, our population shall have increased to 83.4 million people. ”

“ Most all observers realize and understand that while we are apparently concentrating on the increase in production as well as in the growth of the Gross National Product, a corresponding obsession should arise among our population with respect to family planning and the control of the growth of our population. ”

“ There are those who have misgivings about increasing our food production because of the inadequacy of our land area. This year, we are starting the farming of the sea. With relatively productive marine resources in an area of 1,655,300 square kilometers we should be able to bring about such a revolution, just as in the last ten years we were able to bring about through our high-yielding varieties, the green revolution. ”

“ The sum of these initiatives in foreign policy is a diplomacy placed at the service of national development, and imbued with a vision of the interdependence of nations. In four years we have constructed methodically a network of relations with many countries that confers benefits upon the national life and that in no way has endangered our sense of well-being and security. ”

“ Education must continue as a high priority, not only within the schools, bin outside the school system. This calls for a more judicious use of public media and other facilities in the task of adult, or out-of-school education. Through vigorous educational campaigns, we should succeed in orienting our population to our increasing social development goals. ”

“ Allied with the responsibility of government to plan and manage national development is the task to generate and harness resources effectively. And thus we have raised the revenues of government from ?1.0 billion in 1965 when I look over the Presidency to ?16.5 billion in the just concluded fiscal year.
Without the efforts to increase the fiscal base of the economy, the accomplishments of government in the field of public investments would have been severely curtailed. The limits of our efforts must necessarily be circumscribed by the extent to which we improve the base of government income. ”

“ During the last four years, public investments have been poured heavily into public services especially into the infrastructure development program which are designed to expand the productive capacity of the economy. Public investment expenditures have risen to about 38 percent of the total expenditures of the national government. In the earlier years of my administration, the most that we could reach was close to 20 percent. In a period of four to five years, we have doubted public investment in infrastructure development. ”

“ This was the time when we committed the largest sums of our available resources to the socio-economic development of the countryside, and industry, jobs, investments, credit, incomes and education shifted to the great mass of our population in the rural areas. ”

“ Before events could make the decisions for us, we undertook the necessary effort of seizing control over our foreign policy and of revising the very framework of our relations with the rest of the world, it was action necessitated and engendered by the thrust of domestic policies toward independence, innovation, and total self-reliance. ”

“ With Southeast Asia, with whom we seek the deepest and closest ties, we have developed and contributed to the building of a strong regional association in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The historic agreements in Bali this year are the culmination of almost a decade of nurturing Southeast Asia’s essential homogeneity, and the commencement of a regional effort that is of far-reaching value to the security and development prospects of all Asian peoples and countries. ”

“ Let us without equivocation unite behind these programs. They deserve the support of all. For whatever we achieve tomorrow can only mean progress if it transforms the life of the poor. Our task is to see within the shortest possible time the final emancipation of the poor of our country. ”

“ In agriculture, we must realize at least a 4 per cent growth in food production during the next decade, by expanding arable and harvested areas, and increasing yields. To attain increased productivity we well have to adopt or develop new and appropriate technologies, organize and manage more efficiently our extension services, commit large-scale investments to water resources, fertilizer, communication and transport, and rationalize pricing. ”

“ From the initial shock of the energy crisis, the world has braced itself against the onslaught of global recession, of commodity shortages including food, of international monetary disorder, and of sustained challenge to the world economic order. ”

“ With an important portion of our population suffering extensive destruction and the death of thousands of our population—in the last report 8,000 were supposed to have perished—we went into the work of relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction using mostly the resources generated within our own country by a people moving in united and concerted action. On different occasions, we have seen the same newly discovered capability at work, in varying scale and degree and according to the demands of the hour. It is very much with us today. ”

“ Our New Society, addressing itself to the neglected rural and urban poor, has enabled the farmers in some areas to double and in some areas to treble their income- Unemployment has considerably decreased—from 7 percent in 1972 to 3.9 percent in the present year. Our people in general have become self-sufficient in staples, while government income has increased from ?5.75 billion in 1972 to ?22.4 billion this year. ”

“ With 74 percent of our fuel requirements coming from petroleum, five percent from hydroelectric power and only a small percentage from other fuels, and 86 percent of such petroleum requirements coming from the Middle East, it is in our national interest to find dependable safeguards against the vagaries of international oil politics, not to speak of cartel taxes, infiniteness of resources, and the conservation programs of exporting countries. ”

“ We must create sufficient jobs to absorb the present ranks of the unemployed, and the 400.000 annual addition to the labor force. Public investments must increase to about 5 per cent of the GNP by 1980, particularly in the area of housing. There must continue to be reform in taxation to reduce the heavy dependence on international trade and correspondingly widen the domestic base as well as improve the social equity of the entire tax system. ”

“ Differences of ideology have in no way constricted the possibilities of commerce and cultural exchange, and we are finding with every passing year that these countries provide new markets and sources of supply of enormous significance to our development effort. ”

“ To answer the manpower needs of development, and the employment Opportunities of our manpower, we have invested heavily in vocational and technical schools, in schools for adult education, in barrio high schools and in manpower training centers. We have scholarships both for the cultural minorities and for the majority. We have grantees, stale scholars, science scholars, and special scholars numbering by the thousands. As a part of the grantees or scholars from the cultural minorities, there are more than 7,000 government subsidized scholars as of today. ”

“ As vested interests manipulated the apparatus of power and the disaffected majority agitated for some measure of political control, our government steadily drifted towards paralysis and in many cases abdication. ”

“ In industry, we must support our objective of higher industrial growth with investments in relatively labor-intensive finished consumer goods industries, the second stage of import substitution for selected intermediate and capital goods industries, and the generation of exports. ”

“ In fulfilling this social vision, we ruled out the expropriation of wealth and its redistribution among our people in the form of welfare wages. We sought more lasting change and improvement of human welfare, centered on the person’s productive capacities and initiative. ”

“ But as I have said repeatedly, military experience in the past and present demonstrates one outstanding fact of contemporary life—the security nations and states will hinge principally upon the success or failure of subversion, massive infiltration with overt alien support, or indigenous rebellion. ”

“ In our relations with the Western countries, particularly the United States with whom our ties are deep and strong, we have sought and found a new relationship compatible with emerging realities in Asia and in our respective circumstances. ”