Ferdinand Marcos

“ In these times of rupture—of a breaking of nations, of radical change in values, of sudden departures and great, perilous beginnings—we stand as a people and as a nation.
This nation stands, tested by adversity and deriving strength from it, sum­moning a fresh will from the continuing challenges that are the historical legacy of all struggling nations. ”

“ The increasing frequency of criminal activity poses a threat not only to duly constituted authority, but ultimately to the entire social order. This is why it is my unswerving aim that the priorities in the agenda of 1972 shall be led by a program against criminality and violence. This year, and through the next, we will permit no compromise with crime and vice; I want all the resources of government to be organized and managed so as to wage full and unremitting war against those who, for one reason or another, conceive of government as an object to be scorned, abused and terrorized. ”

“ The most urgent problem of the nation today—possibly through the rest of this decade—is the problem of peace and order. All our plans for development, themselves urgent, are contingent upon our successful management of this grave national problem. Only in conditions of calm and social stability may we hope to undertake the manifold and diverse tasks necessary for sustained growth. ”

“ Together we must, in unity, command our present and our future as a nation by converting dangers into opportunities, crisis into strength and today’s reverses into tomorrow’s momentum for advance. The alternative is for us all—the leadership of today regardless of partisan differences—to be judged as having defaulted our last clear chance to keep our country united—and free. ”

“ Democracy is not a synonym for political naiveté. Democracy, in the exercise of its own strategic defensive, may program its own permissiveness, in accordance with constitutional processes, to meet the threats to its own existence, in short to defend its own institutions against wanton attacks.
But the main challenge to democracy, in my belief, is not the threat of an alienated minority. We can control this threat. The real test lies in its capacity to perform according to its own standards, according to the hopes that it raises, the dreams that it excites. ”

“ In a world chronically torn by crisis and convulsed with conflict, we shall continue to put our trust in human liberty and dignity: we shall continue to seek our fullest growth in freedom; nor shall we stop to ask the price or count the cost in defending our birthright. ”

“ Fortified by the trials we have undergone, the ordeals we have passed, our people can no longer be daunted by crisis in the days ahead. For they will be strong in the knowledge that each hardship surmounted and every crisis mastered can only strengthen the fiber and temper the soul of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know that some of you would be satisfied by an admission of failure, a confession of weakness, a contrite promise to do better, but such a posture will neither lift the cloud from our minds nor carry our nation forward. We have not been mandated by our people to inaugurate the age of despair. ”

“ I would be less than candid if I did not acknowledge that government could have done better by way of confronting the challenge posed by violent and criminal elements. I am aware that unsolved crimes, recurring social conflicts erupting in bloodshed in certain areas, the reported activities of so-called private armies, the increasing boldness and inventiveness of criminal elements, and repeated acts of violence in public demonstrations and rallies have contributed to the erosion of confidence in and respect for public authority. ”

“ We must stand together as one nation because ranged against us are forces sworn to disrupt our cohesion and convert brothers into enemies. No one can put off this menace, nor can we beg for time before our threatened enslavement. ”

“ Faced with awesome demands upon our nation’s vigor and endurance in the past two years, a lesser people might have faltered or even gone under. We did not flinch, we confronted these events. This bold confrontation and mastery of crisis has bred great strength in the Filipino people. I believe that we have emerged from the turmoil and the tensions of our society stronger in conviction and faith in the necessity of human liberty. ”

“ Need for Policy Reforms
However, our economic vigor has potentials that have not been fully tapped. Just look around our neighboring countries and we see progress measured in excess of 10 percent growth per year. Given our better endowment of resources and the ingenuity and flexibility of our people, there is no reason why our society and economy should not be able to achieve as much and why we should not impose later much higher goals than we now have. ”

“ During the past six years, I devoted major portions of my State of the Nation message to economic issues. This preoccupation with the economy sterns from my firm belief that continuous progress of our society is possible only if it rests on a vigorous economic foundation. ”

“ Vast areas of our country are still denied a vital mark of modernization: electric power. For this reason, these areas—and their people—are cut off from the main current of development and growth. They are unable to tap their potential for irrigation, mechanization, cottage industries, and agro-industrial activities which are necessary to raise the quality of life in those areas.
Realizing all this, I have made rural electrification a priority program of my Administration. ”

“ We must see to it that economic growth is translated into social progress. Thus may we achieve the ultimate purpose of all economic undertakings, name­ly, the dignity of the human person. This is what I have called a Democratic Revolution. ”

“ There is total darkness for one side and dazzling brightness for the other. Clinging to either of these absolutes may reveal our temperament, but it will neither define our condition nor secure our future as a nation. ”

“ From all the foregoing, it is quite clear that public participation in preserving peace and order is an important element of the total effort that I propose to undertake against crime and lawlessness. Before my term is over, I wish to see that this public participation, among others in the form of greater vigilance, more active support of public agencies by means of voluntary testimony, and the like, shall have become more assertive and consistent. I cannot stress too much that the citizenry has a crucial role in determining the conditions in which it shall live. ”

“ A more important requirement is the solidarity of mind and purpose among our people, that essential loyalty to flag and country which is the key to national stability and genuine progress. I, therefore, take this opportunity to call on all segments of society once again to provide our government the moral support for our program of national security and survival. ”

“ No less than the Supreme Court has recognized the existence of a rebellion in the country, when it said in its historic decision concerning my suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus: “we entertain ... no doubts about the existence of a sizeable group of men who have publicly risen in arms to overthrow the government and have thus been and still are engaged in rebellion against the government of the Philippines.” ”

“ One outstanding feature of our recent experience is that when the private sector and the government act in concert, their combined efforts result in almost immediate solution to difficult economic problems. As a result, the per­formance of the economy in the past six years, compared to achievements in previous periods as well as the performance of other democratic countries, is something that we can be proud of. ”

“ Every goal we choose involves a hard choice—a sacrifice, on the one hand, and an aspiration, on the other. To believe that there is a soft choice is to live, as some of us do now, in a fool’s paradise. ”

“ Diplomatic crisis—whether it be the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations, the threat of world war, or the actual outbreak of war between India and Pakistan—affected the economic environments of all nations, but most of all, the poor. ”

“ We have formulated a manpower development program, which includes training and placement services and a manpower center in every municipality.
We have begun several programs aimed at improving the economic oppor­tunities of the masses through cooperation and self-help. These include live­stock dispersal and cooperative farming which harness the energy of our youth, which too often find an outlet instead in wasteful and unproductive violence. This is a powerful force, which can be utilized for the concrete benefit of both the country and the young. ”

“ We also launched, for the first time in our history, a milk-production program designed to offset the vastly-increased prices of milk and milk products in the world market. The only real answer to increased world prices, as you all know, is to produce the commodity ourselves in order to be less vulnerable to the economic policies of other countries. ”

“ Without counterpart finance, the amount of development resources we can have will be fairly more limited than we can presently raise and absorb. This is because the devel­opment loans we need to help ourselves will not be forthcoming in the same volume. For us, the unwanted consequence of this would be a reduced rate of economic development, not more. Therefore, I am proposing that we raise additional tax resources to be part of the Development Fund which I shall refer to again. This will assure that we can achieve the investment goals of our Four-Year Development Plan. ”

“ We cannot achieve progress at the pace and of the nature that we wish without counting the human and material cost.
We cannot have the peace and order that are ideally desired without per­sonally involving ourselves in attaining it. ”

“ In dealing with other nations, we operate on the principle that the world is no longer dichotomous. On the contrary, today is the era of multiple alignments. We are required, therefore, to make concurrent efforts to ease the way towards the establishment of relations with the Soviet Union’s rival Socialist state, the People’s Republic of China. ”

“ We shall continue to encourage the organization of farm workers into unions and cooperatives, in order to enable them to participate more meaningfully in land reform. Unorganized, farm workers are impotent; organized, they are a real force — perhaps, the decisive propelling force behind land reform.
Last year, Congress put more money in the Land Bank, but that is not enough. With the automatic conversion of all share-tenants into leasehold, we urgently need more funds this year, especially in the form of farm credit for the newly-emerged leaseholders. ”

“ It is no less important in our effort to deal with crime that we develop the regional concept in crime control. All too often, there are incidents which exceed the jurisdiction or competence of local police agencies. For this problem, there are two possible solutions: either arrange an organizational tie-up between the national and local police agencies, or bring local agencies together in a consortium or a metropolitan police-type of arrangement which will, among other things, allow a sharing of resources and avoid conflicts—an all too common weakness. ”

“ As I suggest elsewhere in this Message, the maintenance of peace and order is a pre-condition to the goals of national development. What this means, further, is that it is our desire as soon as practicable to shift most of our expend­itures to the capital requirements of growth, and make this the Administration's principal task. We should therefore endeavor to enhance and harness the productive power of all elements of our society. Those who are not now contributing to production must, in particular, be roused to an awareness of their duty. ”

“ No one minimizes the great potential for crisis in such problem areas as the Middle East where outlook for peace has dimmed in the past year; or in Indo­china where the war has decelerated without opening new vistas for permanent settlement. In Africa, south of the Sahara, characteristic tensions incident to the problems of nation-building, continue to make the region of the world highly volatile and unpredictable, characteristics which are emphasized by the unresolved problem of racialism and violation of human rights. ”