Unknown to many, Marcos Sr. is the only president who issued numerous decrees in favor of the working class to truly make him as the representative of the workers
The administration should give priority to the basic needs of our people.
It is a public knowledge that every state needs funds for it to attend to the specific areas, such as infrastructure, agriculture, health and possibly education.
The state must pay attention to the goals of independence to realize the substance of sovereignty.
One must note that independence without sovereignty would have no meaning much that sovereignty without development and progress is without substance.
The situation in the Philippines, however, remains pathetic and hopeless.
It failed to give priority to our endeavor to achieve the needs of independence such as the building of infrastructure, agricultural development, welfare for our labor and health to our people.
For instance, we pursue the goals in our infrastructure with a definite objective to attain progress and development.
It is often used as our gauge on how far we achieved the goals of our people as a state.
It was this particular achievement why former President Marcos was reelected.
Our people equated his building of infrastructures as his tangible achievements for progress.
The second priority the old Marcos government achieved was to guaranty on whether people will have something to eat, and could afford to buy them at affordable prices.
Marcos knew that food was equivalent to survival, and man’s best anchor to that was to give meaning to survival.
Every man must not only be given his right to eat but a means to afford him respect and dignity.
The old man’s program took a multifaceted approach to break the century-old problem of food shortage.
First, he took the more radical approach of land reform by issuing P.D. 27 limiting the landholdings; urging the formation of farmers’ cooperatives; granting and liberalizing loans to land-reform beneficiaries; building of fertilizer plant and selling them at subsidized price; and carrying out massive irrigation in all agricultural lands.
Unfortunately, the rascals in the past administration opted to privatize the fertilizer plant only to close it later to the delight of the rich rice farmers.
Marcos knew what it meant to have food security.
The present breed of leaders does not see the difference and value of our priority as a state.
We abandoned our economy in favor of defense and security without knowing how will it cost us to invest.
We can never expect a return to our investment nor would be able to decipher what our allies intend us to do in their decision to expand their bases.
We exactly did the opposite to what the opposition once called as the “American lapdog in Asia.”
Then President Marcos did not only work to dismantle the US bases but limited their jurisdiction.
He realized the US would never surrender jurisdiction over its servicemen to a foreign power.
In lieu, the government was only able to obtain increased military assistance as substitute for jurisdiction over the bases including the limitation on the number of bases and area covered by their use for the bases.
Marcos was also able to secure a collective bargaining agreement for Filipino workers working inside the bases including the payment of tax on imported items made by US servicemen residing inside them.
The Marcos administration then embarked on a massive and ambitious construction of specialized hospitals.
It was the First Lady Imelda R. Marcos that diligently took the task of providing affordable medical service to our people.
Today, the Philippines boasts of having built the first Heart Center in Asia; introduced the pioneering medical science of kidney transplant by building the National Kidney Center and Transplant Institute; established the only specialized Children’s Hospital in Asia; created the Lung Center of the Philippines in lieu of the Philippine Tuberculosis.
The First Lady also opened a general hospital for government personnel which former President Marcos initially named “Ospital ng Bagong Lipunan” to serve all in the public service.
For reason of hatred of the past administration, the successor administration changed the name of the hospital by giving it an obscure and insignificant name to maliciously erase Marcos’ program of government.
Despite the barrage of slander – Marcos was called a dictator by the radicals – Imelda improved and widened the facilities of the Philippines General Hospital to help most of its indigent and the poorest of the poor.
But in her eagerness to raise funds, she was accused of corruption, only to be acquitted of the unfounded charges.
The fourth priority of the then Marcos administration was to improve the conditions of the working masses.
Unknown to many, Marcos Sr, is the only president who issued numerous decrees in favor of the working class to truly make him as the representative of the workers.
He issued decrees that significantly improved the working conditions and welfare of the workers.
For Marcos Jr. to switch from this line directly deviated from what our people wants.
He failed to analyze the urgent needs of our people from the need to maintain our national security.
National security is more of a policy and requires intensive investment for armaments.
Our current problem is more of propaganda to justify the specific objectives of the US.
We may be able to survive without fulfilling our security obligation but the US will still have to weigh their obligation to us.
On the contrary, it was during the old Marcos time when the limitation on the number of US bases was renegotiated and instead put a time limit for the stay of their bases.
He did this despite the obvious interference of Malaysia, the UK and US intelligence services.
The three took turns in manipulating the defense policy.
Marcos Jr. failed to balance the priority of our economy in favor of securing our own defense.
The Marcos era marked the period when the Philippines, not the US, was the one that dictated our foreign policy.
Previously or right after the grant of our independence, the Philippines enjoyed the utmost right to determine which element in our country constitutes a threat to our security or which country poses a threat to our security.
Yes, we have communist threat in the 50s, but again these are threats borne by the local insurgency movement.
During the then Marcos administration, we had two identifiable threats to our security: the local communist party headed by the Communist Party of the Philippines and by its military arm, the New People’s Army, and by the secessionists National Liberation Front.
Marcos never took them seriously, believing that security problem was solely the government’s responsibility.
Despite the armed support from Malaysia, and from elements of the US and UK intelligence, the country was able to thwart off these threats.
Yes, there was that threat from communist countries like China, Russia and North Korea, but we never treated them as external threat unlike today that we have totally changed our perception of threat.
We already presume that we are in no position to defend ourselves.
During the Marcos era, the Philippines took it as its primary responsibility to defend the country against any form of external aggression.
We were obligated to fight our own war.
The role of those foreign military bases is when there is an overt support from a foreign power like external attack.
But now, we conditioned ourselves into believing that we need the US for our defense and indubitably justify the expansion of their bases here and the sale of arms because of perceived external threat.
Most important, the new concept of foreign military assistance justified the creation of the concept of “proxy war” such as war in Ukraine with NATO and the US fighting against Russia, and here in our own next door.
We are being pitted by the US against Taiwan without any clear-cut agreement that the US will go to war for us over that island.
In fact, China’s threat to invade Taiwan has cleverly been used by the US to expand its military bases here to nine and accelerate the sale of its armaments in this part of the region.
All we hear from the US is their promise to fight for us in the invasion by China.
China today has the economic stakes not to involve itself in a reckless war over Taiwan and has instead conditioned us to accept the presence of those bases and allow the neoconservatives from raking in profit to forestall the pending economic collapse of the US.
It is profit that the US cares for and nothing about our security.
(rpkapunan@gmail.com)
