Ferdinand Marcos

“ We have made a tremendous start towards national development. To draw back now simply because certain factors seem inhospitable to efforts, or because greater demands will be made of all of us is to nurse the illusion that the future will be more propitious. ”

“ There are bound to be scoundrels in any group of men, especially in such a number of men who are taught the art of killing. In such a large group of men, of course, there is need to clean the ranks and we are happy to note that the citizenry, for once, are participating in the efforts to clean the ranks of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and have given their cooperation, understanding, and sym­pathy, which has allowed the Armed Forces to work out its program not only as guardians of our security but also as participants in the economic develop­ment program. ”

“ One accomplishment which signals the new de­cade of the 70's is the rural electrification program. Before there was barely any electrification in the rural areas, but at the end of 1979 there were elec­trical connections to a million-and-a-half houses, servicing more than eight million of our people, all of them in the rural areas. A total of 113 co­operatives were organized in the Visayas and Mindanao and the program is so successful that the United States and some developing countries have honored us by pointing to the Philippines as a model for rural electrification in developing countries. ”

“ The burden of national leadership in a time such as this is to provide vision in the midst of uncertainty; to hold out hope and confidence when threats and difficulties appear to mount, when danger confronts us in the face, and to clear a path through which the people may find refuge and security. ”

“ How does the com­mon man share in the fruits of economic develop­ment? Has development contributed to the social well-being of our people?
The answer to these questions is an unqualified “yes.” The income of the lowest 21 percent of our country’s population has more than doubled from 2.5 percent of the total in 1965 to 5.5 percent in 1975 and certainly in 1979 this has further accelerated.
How about employment? At what rate have we increased the employment of our people? I speak of the rate of employment. The period from 1965 to 1972 was marked by an employment rate of 2.3 percent. ”

“ I am speaking of the creeping defeatism that has perceptibly reared its head again among peoples of the world. And in the Philippines I am speaking of the pre­dictable efforts of those who all these years have never shared the burden of effort with our people and have instead shirked their citizens’ duties and devoted their time wholly to the sowing of confusion and the undermining of the efforts of Government. ”

“ For this is what the times impel us to review and ponder here today. At no other time than now has it ever been more necessary for our people to understand the course of the nation—from where we have come and where we are going. ”

“ If I tend to stick to figures, perhaps it is because I am excited by figures, all kinds of figures. There is nothing, however, more fascinating than that par­ticular figure, the figure of economic development. ”

“ To fight unemployment, we have encouraged the development of skilled and semi-skilled labor, and have allowed these workers to work overseas. Those abroad, 500,000 of them, earned for their families and the country a total of more than $1 billion every year.
In social services, particularly in health and nutrition, we have made significant headway. The life-span of Filipinos has increased from 58 years in 1970 to 62 years in 1980, the infant mortality rate has been reduced to 66 per thousand from 80 per thousand.
Calorie intake has increased from 83.6 to 88.6 percent in 1978. ”

“ But if we are to limit our study to industrial growth, we see a more outstanding performance instead of the 6.4 percent growth recorded from 1967 to 1972. I refer to the record of industrial growth in the latter part of the 70's, when it ave­raged an annual growth rate of 8.3 percent. And this will no doubt increase even more dramatically with the acceleration of the momentum of industrialization which we have set as a program espe­cially with the eleven chosen basic factories and industries we are developing. ”

“ In what we truly confront today, we do not face anything new or alien to our experience as a people.
There are for us only two ways of viewing the government’s duty in matters affecting our econo­mic and social life today. ”

“ Within the 80's we expect to bring down the unemployment rate further to 4 percent. Perhaps we should call attention to the fact that even in the United States unemployment some­times reaches as high as 8 percent.
It will be noted parenthetically here that our population program has succeeded in reducing the high growth rate from 3.01 percent as of the close of the 60's to 2.38 percent as of the end of 1979. ”

“ We ambitiously invest in an accelerated energy development program because we are confident of its success. I have ordered that we now spend every year, for the next five years, a total of ₱5 billion, a doubling of the original program, for we must accelerate our development of the renewable indigenous sources of energy. ”

“ It is also said that the multinationals gobble up all economic opportunities, and this, they claimed, means that the multinationals have been permitted and licensed to rob the Filipino people of their rightful share of income and profit. Is this true? This is not supported by the data and statistics. When I took over as President, the only exports of the Philippines were the four traditional products that you and I know about at that time: sugar, coconut products, mineral ores and forest products. They constituted about 85 percent of the entire export products of the country. ”

“ The nutrition program of the Philippines, incidentally, has been adopted as a model by the United Nations for all Third World countries, and the Philippines has become a part of the United Nations University.
Every year there is an increase in the number of pupils who are accommodated in our school sys­tem. In 1979-1980, enrollment was about 9 million. This year, 1980, there are 12.2 million pupils enrolled. The literacy rate has been increased to 88.9 percent this year from 83.4 percent ten years ago. In Manila, the literacy rate is almost 100 percent. ”

“ And because this promises our true deliverance from the energy crises, we are committed to it. We espouse increased production and improved productivity, both in agriculture and industry, because these are the true and lasting solutions to inflation and the trade imbalance. ”

“ Finally, we propose special attention to the quality and scope of social services to the eleven basic needs of man to ensure that our development will meet the test of social justice and democratization. ”

“ Let us get our perspectives right and straight. Demagoguery has never solved problems. Inaction, immobility and fearful cowering in hesitancy or procrastination have always ended in tragedy, individual as well as national. ”

“ Not only do we give free elementary and secondary education; we grant educational benefits to state institutions. For the University of the Philippines alone, let it be noted that we have pro­vided yearly a subsidy of ₱5,000 for every student except for the College of Medicine where we provide. ”

“ The first counsels us towards halting the programs, inaction, postponing decisions, and adopting half measures that are mere palliatives reminiscent of our past responses to problems, which falsely place at center stage pain killers in lieu of real me­dicines for the disease in the hope that problems will wear themselves out and that the situation will return to normal. These measures make the claim of shielding the people from the onslaughts of cri­sis, but in fact succeed only in prolonging and deepening the nation’s state of embattlement. ”

“ Second, the accelerated expansion of the na­tional economy in both industry and agriculture and particularly in new sectors of economic acti­vity; and Third, the sharing of the fruit of development and the democratization of wealth to narrow the terrible dichotomies between the rich and the poor, and the urban and rural sectors of the nation. ”

“ In other food crops such as fish, corn, coffee they contributed their share in the increase of our total crop production from 12.2 million metric tons in 1965 to last year’s production of 24.4 million metric tons—an exact doubling of productivity dur­ing the entire period under review.
Neither should it be necessary to speak of the increasing investments. ”

“ Suffice it to say that there is also another aspect which we find dramatic, and that is tourism. It is a sector well-known to you. We have inched for­ward close to the one million tourists mark, bringing in earnings close to $250 million annually from this non-trade dollar-earner. ”

“ There are some outstanding engineering constructions which we can refer to like Pantabangan, which irrigates 78,000 hectares and generates 100 megawatts of power as well as mitigate floods in the lower reaches of the Pampanga River. ”