" These men served their country, not Marcos. "
The small group of men who managed the Philippine economy during the decade 1973-1983 arguably was the best economic management team in the history of the Philippine economy during the last four decades.
The group was composed of Cesar E.A. Virata (mechanical engineer, former dean of the U.P. College of Business Administration), Vicente Paterno (mechanical engineer, Harvard Business School, former Meralco president), Jaime Laya (CPA, Stanford University Ph.D.), Gerardo Sicat (economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D.), Placido Mapa Jr. (economist, Harvard University), Arturo Tanco Jr. (management consultant, Ateneo de Manila University) and Alfredo Juinio Jr. (engineer, former U.P. College of Engineering dean).
Because of the apparent stigma that attached to them – except Vicente Paterno – for having been members of the martial-law Cabinet, Cesar Virata and his colleagues chose to lower their public profile in the post-EDSA Revolution era and refrained from publicly discussing the roles they played in the management of the Philippine economy during the crucial decade 1973-1983. Paterno broke away from President Ferdinand Marcos in 1980, joined the Opposition and was elected senator in the first post-EDSA Revolution election.
After the decades of silence, former Prime Minister and Secretary of Finance Cesar Virata and his former economic management teammates decided, in 2012, to get together and discuss their roles in, and personal recollections of the management of the economy during the martial-law years. The time had come, they thought, to begin the process of setting the record straight and correcting the rampant misimpressions regarding the management of the Philippine economy during the decade following Mr. Marcos’s assumption of martial law powers. As Vicente Paterno put it: “Hopefully a ‘Tales of Martial Law’ will be printed and somehow convince people to delve more deeply into what really happened during the Marcos regime, because unfortunately the impressions that remain of it are the impressions of the last years, and they forget how much the government had improved the country in the period of the 1970s.”
The former Minister of Industry’s hope was fulfilled recently with the publication of In Dialogue: The Economic Managers of the Marcos Administration. Messrs. Virata, Paterno, Sicat, Laya and Mapa asked former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza to join them in the dialogue, which consisted of six long sessions held in 2012 and 2013. Mr. Mendoza, who learned his law at UP and Harvard University, provided the legal backstopping for the crafting and revision of the many laws that Cesar Virata and his colleagues needed to get approved in order to be able to do a good economic management job. Messrs. Tanco and Juinio were not participants in the dialogue, having passed away prior to 2012.
There are essentially two types of people who should get a copy of “In Dialogue: The Economic Managers of the Marcos Administration.” The first is the type who is a serious student of the history of this country, especially the history of its economy. The second type is the person who approaches the study of history with an open, unbiased mind – the type who, in Vicente Paterno’s words, wants to know “what really happened.
The period 1973-1983, which began shortly after the placement of this country under martial law and ended just after the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., was dismissed by anti-Marcos people as a period of cronyism, corruption, runaway foreign borrowing, Imelda Marcos’ extravagance and human rights violations. What the members of the martial-law economic management are trying to say, with their book, is that the first decade of the martial law period was a lot more than that. As proof they point, among other things, to the fact that most of the more than 2,000 PDs (Presidential decrees) and hundreds of LOIs (letters of instruction) and AOs (administrative orders) issued during that period continue to exist, many with their original wording.
‘In Dialogue: The Economic Managers of the Marcos Administration is a highly instructive, eye-opening and, in parts, touching narrative of important economic events that took place four decades ago. No serious student of this country’s history should be without a copy of it.
The book contains many insights and revelations that deserve to be highlighted; they will have to wait for future columns. This column ends with a quotation from former Prime Minister Virata: “I considered it my duty to really serve our country, and that was the only thing that kept me going.”
Serve their country, not Ferdinand Marcos, was what Mr. Virata and his fellow-economic managers did.