Ferdinand Marcos

“ We see it as a dimension that must attend the very struggle for development: Wealth must be democratized and benefits must be shared.
We can agree that there is need to restudy today the dimensions of moral revolution. Now more than ever—and this is why I welcome this discussion—there is need to uphold and defend the trust of public oath, to reinforce the place of ethics in the private sector, to uphold ourselves to the egalitarian goals of our society, and to read once again even the Constitution which speaks of public accounting. ”

“ Because two months from now, we shall mark the completion of a decade, ten years in our national life, since that critical moment when the nation embarked on the course of crisis government and national transformation. And there is not one among us today, be he supporter or critic of the administration, who does not feel and recognize that so much of what constitutes our national life today is the offspring of that decade, those then years of change. ”

“ The beginning of the program of national transformation ten years ago and the shaping of the very ideology and philosophy of government that we espoused was based on moral change. In the pages of my book, The Democratic Revolution, I presented the following view, and may I quote:
A revolution may survive any political or economic error but not a moral one. A revolution without a humanist dimension is merely a struggle for material things. We are struggling for more than the rice in our bellies and the clothes on our backs. ”

“ I ask and appeal to all my friends in the labor sector to understand that while we could have utilized the heavy hand of the law against those who have indiscriminately, sometimes libelously, spoken against both government as well as the private sector, knowing fully well the truth about the situation, we have not done so. ”

“ We are fighting for our pride as a nation and as individual human beings.
Our conception of the “moral revolution” proceeds from a rigorous recognition of inequalities that exist in society, inequities that we must first extirpate, and of the need to strike them down so there can be no debate whatsoever. ”

“ The past ten years will be remembered as a period when the foreign policy of our country came into its own, when we irrevocably broke our long confinement to the vision of the world in terms of the cold war, when we opened ties with the communist and socialist world, when we made common cause with the nations of the Third World, when we forged the breakthrough with our Southeast Asian neighbors towards the building of a regional community, the ASEAN, and when we attained a place of pride and influence in the councils of nations. ”

“ We can surely say now that we have not only managed the difficult transition from crisis government to normal democratic government; we have seen for ourselves that without martial law and even with normal representative government, we can effectively administer the affairs of government. Political will has not deserted us. Leadership has gained from the strengthening of the Batasang Pambansa and the reorganization of the various offices in the executive power and, for that matter, the ongoing reorganization of the judiciary. ”

“ No one has been as sensitive to your demands and has extended the strong arm of support of the presidency than the incumbent President of the Republic of the Philippines. But today, I say to you, your demands are unrealistic. Our priority at this point must center on employment of those without jobs. The welfare of labor, may I say again, is my abiding obsession. ”

“ I am aware that they are overworked like us also, like the Members of the Batasang Pambansa. I am aware that there is a difference of opinion on many matters pertaining to the Rules of Court. Accordingly, therefore, I have asked the help of retired chief justices and former justices of the Supreme Court. May I ask that I now be permitted to call an informal meeting in order that we can determine what we should do, whether the Supreme Court should allow the Batasang Pambansa to exercise its reserve power to amend the Rules of Court and wipe out the 450,000 cases pending before the courts. ”

“ What we have demonstrated in terms or strengthening the very structure of government, as provided for in Section 5 of Article XVII, which mandates that we should give priority to the reorganization of the government, we have matched with a new sense of sovereignty and fulfillment, of achievement, and independence in our relations with the rest of the world. ”

“ We ask the opposition, therefore, to remember that the party in power will try as best as it can to accommodate them in public and open debate, for this is a government modified by parliamentary means and not by the mindless recourse to violence.
We know we can never think alike amid the dilemmas and problems of our changing world, nor should we welcome the robot like acceptance of the thoughts coming from a single leader ”

“ In this spirit, we shall face the new agenda of government.
The world today is reeling from the onslaught of economic crisis and uncertainty. And this is what I would like to talk about for what is true with the world is also true with our country. But as we have done in the past, we will not allow the present crisis to paralyze and immobilize us.
Unemployment today is a major concern ”

“ While in other countries, unions are voluntarily abandoning their wage demands and are now beginning to play their role in the effort at economic recovery, there are those among us who press for wage increases now. ”

“ I understand Marcopper was losing $120 million a year, and they could not continue until the government started to assume some of their losses.
In other industries the picture is the same. Recessive trends are a fact. Yet, there are those in our labor ranks who are restive and are pressing for a major hike in minimum wages and wag increases at a time when businesses are retrenching and struggling to stay afloat. ”

“ Many industries are closed or closing down. Some of the copper and gold mining industries have closed or were closing. And they were going to cause the unemployment of an additional 40,000 workers who were threatened to be laid off. ”