INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100370004-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 2007
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: September 19, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
PROGRAM Meet the Press STATION WRC-TV
NBC Network
DATE September 19, 1982 12:00 Noon CITY Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT Interview with President of the Philippines
BILL MONROE: Our guest today on Meet the Press is the
President of the Philippines, Ferdinand E. Marcos, who is making
his first official visit to the United States in 16 years.
President Marcos has dominated the politics of his country since
1965. For eight years, ending last year, he ruled under martial
law. In June of last year he was elected to a new six-year term
as President in an election boycotted by most opposition groups.
President Marcos received 88 percent of the votes cast.
Our reporters today are Louis Carr of Fortune, Robert
Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Smith of Newsweek, and to
open the questioning, Marvin Kalb of NBC News.
MARVIN KALB: Mr. President, there are two American
bases in the Philippines, Subic and Clark; and there are going to
be renegotiation of those bases starting next April, according to
the White House. Will you put any restrictions on the use of
those American bases for any American activity in the Middle
East?
PRESIDENT FERDINAND MARCOS: Well, it is covered by
existing memoranda of agreement and exchanges of notes. I'm
afraid I'm not free to reveal the contents of some of the
agreements. But the general substance of the use of the military
facilities is that the United States is given freedom of
operations with respect to the use of the military facilities in
the Philippines.
KALB: Does that mean, sir, that if there were a crisis
in the Middle East, that the United States could use those two
bases if it saw fit to use them?
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PRESIDENT MARCUS: Provided that it involved a matter
which is necessarily relevant to the safety and security of the
Philippines and Southeast Asia.
KALB: Do you see the security of the Philippines, in
that case, connected to the turmoil in the Middle East?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: In many ways, yes.
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Because, first of all, the lines of
communication, of the transport of oil -- and the transport of
oil pass directly beside the Philippines. If you will remember,
the Malacca Straits and Balabac Straits, South China Sea pass
beside the Philippines. If you will remember, there's a boundary
between Vietnam and the Philippines. We abut each other.
KALB: I just wanted to be clear about your answer, sir.
In other words, there are no restrictions, then, on the use of
those bases.
PRESIDENT MARCUS: There are. But if there was to be
hostilities, probably there won't be.
KALB: Let me ask you the common defense needs relating
to those bases. The United States is paying about $100 million a
year in rent. Since the bases are there for the common defense
of both countries, why is it that you are asking more money for
rent, or higher rent from the United States?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: We have not asked for more money.
What we have asked is that a study be made of exactly what is the
role that the Philippines should playand what exactly are the
defense plans in any contingency, whether these involve the
Philippines or any other country.
MONROE: Thank you, Mr. President.
We'll be back with more questions for President Marcos.
MONROE: Our guest on Meet the Press, President of the
Philippines Ferdinand Marcos.
RICHARD SMITH: Mr. President, some members of the
American Congress, the press, Amnesty International, and some
members of the Philippine community in the United States have
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charged that your government is engaged in systematic violations
of human rights, including, in some cases, torture and political
assassination by members of the Philippine military. How do you
react to those charges? And did President Reagan raise these
issues with you in your talks with him?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: First, let's go the other way around.
President Reagan didn't raise it because the truth of the matter
is this is not a policy of our government.
Secondly, the Philippine government is not engaged in
any policy or widespread abuse and torture of prisoners. There
may be some instances where there have been maltreatment of
prisoners. In those cases, we have punished the culprits. There
are now pending in the court more than -- well, I would say about
500 cases of officers and men who have been charged with abuse.
We have since 1972 to the present kicked out, dishonorably
discharged from the armed forces about 7000 men, among others --
not all of them -- among others, who because of abuse of
prisoners.
Now, some of the prisoners who claim to have been
tortured are doing this deliberately to set up a defense in the
criminal cases that are filed against them for murder, torture,
arson and pillage, as well as for subversion, rebellion and
insurrection. At the beginning, they don't claim any torture.
But as soon as the lawyers get to them, then they claim torture.
SMITH: Your government recently arrested a number of
labor leaders and opposition leaders and charged them with
subversion. What precisely did you see the threat in that
situation?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Let's take a look at one single
incident of a labor leader, Mr. Ulalya (?). He's not just a
labor leader. He's a communist commander. He fought the
government for five years. He was convicted. We released him
and we let him go. He became a labor leader. And as a labor
leader, we discovered that he was not just seeking better wages
for the laborers. He was trying to paralyze industry. And who
was the person who testified against him? His own partner in the
labor union.
SMITH: Could you characterize any differences between
the Reagan Administration's approach on the human rights issue to
your government and the Carter Administration's?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Well, the Carter Administration was
more, should we say, articulate in its belief in newspaper
reports about torture. I thought perhaps that a better policy
would be for them to send -- for the government to send its own
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investigating groups, for the State Department, through the U.S.
Embassy, to conduct its own investigations.
After all, everybody's entitled to a fair hearing. You
get a group like Amnesty International, or any other group, and
they listen to all kinds of rumors and stories. They don't even
confront us. They don't confront the Ministry of Defense. They
don't confront the chief of staff. They don't confront anybody.
And they come up with this report. That's unfair.
ROBERT NOVAK: Mr. President, some of your critics have
called you a dictator who intends to spend the rest of your life
in the presidential office. One of the tests of whether a leader
is a dictator or not is whether he intends to voluntarily
relinquish power. Do you intend to step down at the end of your
present term?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: I've already relinquished power. If
that is the test of a dictator, then I am not one.
In the second place, a dictator is one who decides
Now, let me clarify all of this. I don't decide things
alone. In the Philippines we decide it by consensus. Even
during martial law. There is a common belief that the military
took over and I was in the commander-in-chief, and therefore I
just dictated whatever the decisions were. No. On the contrary,
the military supported the decisions of the civil government.
The civil government is run by a party caucus. We have a
modified presidential system. And the party in power controls
the legislature. This caucus decides. I call a caucus whenever
there's anything to be decided upon.
I have delegated almost all of my powers to a 12-man, or
15-man executive committee. Right now there are 10 members.
NOVAK: But specifically, sir, I asked whether you
intend to leave the presidency after the six years.
PRESIDENT MARCUS: I wish I could right now.
NOVAK: But in six years you don't intend to seek
another term?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Well, that's a different matter.
Here is a situation where suppose you have a war, suppose you
have an emergency, suppose the party again says the other party
can't put up a candidate who can run the country. What will I
do? I would rather that we cross this bridge when we reach it.
But it is my intention -- It is my intention to tell the party to
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NOVAK: One of the things that's concerned some of the
friends of the Philippines is the speculation that your wife,
Imelda, has already been designated as your successor.
PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, no, no.
NOVAK: Can you guaranty that she will not succeed you
in the presidency?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: She's not going to be the successor.
NOVAK: She is not going to be the successor.
PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, she's not going to be the
successor. But she may be needed to help the successor. Because
without her help, or without my help,...
NOVAK: Less than ten years...
PRESIDENT MARCOS: ...the successor may not be able to
LOUIS CARR: One of the reasons, Mr. President, that
you've given to your people for assuming rather wide powers,
which I realize you gave up recently, was the serious economic
problems of the Philippines. Why, then, sir, does the
Philippines rank lowest among the non-communist Asian countries
in nearly ever indicator of social and economic progress?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, that's not true. That's not
true. And even in your article in Fortune we discovered quite a
few, well, wrong statements.
First of all, we doubled our gross national product from
1972 to 1980 and '81. The per capita income increased from $214
to 828. There is no country in Southeast Asia which has had the
successful land reform program and increased its food production
to become self-sufficient and become an exporter of food like the
Philippines. You can mention any. You can mention all the
countries there.
[Confusion of voices]
PRESIDENT MARCOS: ...increased from half a billion
dollars to three billion dollars.
CARR: Why, then, sir...
[Confusion of voices]
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CARR: Well, they, then, sir, has the World Bank
reported that 40 percent of your people live in poverty?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. The
poverty line in the United States is different from the poverty
line here. The income of Filipinos of 2999 -- that's our line,
2999. In 1972, 59 percent of the people had income of this level
and below. In 1975, it went down to 31 percent. Now, that
certainly is an improvement. In 1980, it went down to 20
percent.
CARR: One of your leading economists, however, has said
recently that the real income -- that means after inflation -- of
the poorest one-third of your people has actually decreased in
recent years.
PRESIDENT MARCUS: [Unintelligible] Whoever that
economist is, he probably should go back to school or get a pair
of new glasses.
MONROE: Mr. President, going back to the questions of
Mr. Smith, how do you account for the extensiveness of the
reports of official brutalities in the Philippines? Amnesty
International says that killings, torture, disappearances of
political opponents are on the rise. A recent BBC documentary
showed a young boy talking about watching soldiers behead his
father. A Filipino newspaper said that a lieutenant colonel led
the 18 armed men who committed a massacre of 45 men, women and
children in Samar.
How do you account for so many reports of official
brutality?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Sloppy reporting. And lies, lies.
I admit that some of those are correct. And we punished
some of those men. Those people whom you say were reported as
having massacred some of the villagers.
May I say that the armed forces themselves did not
execute them. They fought them and they were killed in action.
MONROE: Amnesty International says investigations of
theirs do not indicate that people who are said to have been
killed opposing armed forces are actually killed that way. And
they also make the point that investigations don't generally lead
to any results, except maybe some military man being demoted.
And that the official investigation of the massacre I referred to
has never been fully made public.
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Because they won't attend the
investigations. They just reason from the sidelines, I suppose.
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Look, there was a supposed Samarian massacre. Two
hundred people were supposed to have been killed. And so what do
we do? We asked the Minister of Defense to bring everybody -- we
invite everybody. Did the Amnesty International come? No. But
the opposition groups went. And some newspapermen went. Mr.
Briscoe went. Briscoe of Newsweek, I think. Or Time?
[Inaudible comments]
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Associated Press. He went. And what
did they find? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was a fight.
One or two men were killed. And that's it. But a massacre of
200? No.
What is happening is we are falling for the propaganda
of the Communist Party. And those young kids are very adept in
the use of propaganda.
Look, some of these communists even use the uniform of
the armed forces, and then they go and start shooting at
villagers. And, of course, what information do you get? The
armed forces has shot up this village.
What kind of an armed force would be able to capture the
top echelon of all of the leaders of the Communist Party from
1950 to 1980? The first top leaders, the first-echelon leaders,
second-echelon leaders, third-echelon leaders. They're all in
jail or have been eliminated. The only country in Asia that has
successfully done so. Why? Because the citizens are cooperating
with the armed forces.
KALB: Mr. President, one of the possible benefits of
your being in office as long as you have is that you may have
developed a sense of historical perspective. And I'd like to
lean on that possibility and ask you, after Vietnam, after the
American debacle in Vietnam, how reliable is the United States as
an ally? Do you believe, in other words, that the U.S. would
fight another land war in Asia?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: I'm afraid that there are doubts and
misgivings about your fighting a land war in Asia. This is why
we feel that each and every small country should be permitted to
develop its capability to fight a land war in its own territory.
But we probably would have to depend upon the United States for a
war in the sea and in the air, as well as a nuclear umbrella.
KALB: Well, how reliable an ally is that, in that case,
as you see it?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, as we see it, the United States
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could strengthen our economic positions, and at the same time
become a deterrent.
From our point of view, the situation in Asia is not
such that it would encourage any predatory power from engaging in
external attack in any country.
SMITH: Mr. President, in your talks with Secretary
Weinberger and the President, in addition to discussing the
question of so-called rent for the bases, what other kinds of
military aid did you talk about?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: We didn't talk of military aid. We
talked of the scheme to establish, or the scheme under which we
would be able to study the irritants that may exist between our
two countries under the three military agreements that govern our
relations: military assistance pact, military bases or military
facilities, and mutual defense.
Now, we have agreed that the two Secretaries of Defense
will meet regularly, and their respective staffs will also meet.
We've also agreed that the mutual defense board created by the
mutual defense pact will now start organizing for any
contingency, but that we should be permitted to look at it and
see what our role is.
SMITH: You've been quoted recently as saying that you
fear that Japan will dominate Asia, not only politically -- or
not only economically, but politically. How do you react to
American efforts to get the Japanese to increase their defense
spending and their defense capability?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Worried. Very worried. I am
certainly for Japan being able to defend itself, but I'm against
strengthening Japan so it becomes another threat to us, the small
countries in Southeast Asia.
SMITH: Do you see that as a real threat?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Of course. After it has acquired the
capability of self-defense, where do you think it will go?
NOVAK: Mr. President, in line with our previous
discussion of whether the United States is a dependable ally.
When your wife made a mission to the Soviet Union this year, was
this a step toward hedging your bets, a move toward Philippine
non-alignment in the world struggle?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: No. She merely went there to attend
the Tchaikovsky competition, where one of our scholars
participated. And he, incidentally, won one of the...
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NOVAK: But she had some serious discussions on economic
questions.
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes, she had, because she was
instructed to find out what the intentions were.
NOVAK: Well, let me ask you this. Do you think, sir,
that you have more faith in the dependability of the United
States as an ally since President Reagan has been in?
NOVAK: Do you think the attitude of the Congress is any
different than it was before?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: Well, it's not different, because
your system is for a check and balance between the Congress and
the President, which is different from ours. But what I mean is
you have a President and an Executive Department earnestly trying
to establish a viable foreign policy and reestablish the prestige
of the United States in the world. And I think that the members
of Congress understand that.
NOVAK: Let me ask you one other thing on that, sir.
you said that you were not asked by the members of this
Administration about human rights during this...
PRESIDENT MARCUS: No, no, no. By the President.
NOVAK: By the President. Were you talked to by the
members of the Administration about human rights on this visit?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, yes. Yes, of course.
NOVAK: What did they say?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, they, of course, asked me what
was happening in the Philippines. And we gave them reports.
NOVAK: Were they unhappy?
PRESIDENT MARCOS: I don't know, to be frank with you.
I explained to the Foreign Relations Committee, both parties and
both houses, all about human rights.
CARR: Mr. President, many big Philippine companies run
by your friends and relatives have been flourishing with the help
of government loans that they now can't repay, and they're
getting bailed out by the government. How do you explain that?
PRESIDENT MARCUS: And there's where your article in
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Fortune is completely wrong. They are not my friends.
Now, let's take a look at DVD. I've never met the man,
and DVD ran off with $18 million worth of indebtedness and pay.
Now, if that's the kind of a friend I have, by God, then you'd
better change the dictionary.
And next, we have [unintelligible]. One billion dollars
we have had to support it for the past 10 or 20 years. Who is
the owner? Caberouze, whose daughter is married to Osmania,
who was my opponent the last time I ran for President. Are
those my friends.
Then you have Benquet Consolidated.
CARR: Excuse me, Mr. President, but Mr. Silverio and
Mr. Decini are your friends.
CARR: And they are being bailed out by the government.
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Hold on. Hold on. Mr. Silverio is a
Japanese representative. If you think that I would become a
Japanese representative, you're completely wrong. You'd better
write a different article for Fortune.
CARR: When I met Mr. Silverio, he said, "What are
friends for if they can't help?" when I asked him why he was
being helped by the government.
PRESIDENT MARCOS: Probably you are as easily impressed
as some of those who have come to the Philippines with talk like
this. Silverio is nobody. Right now, he and his friends are
being prosecuted. Did you know that?
MONROE: Thank you, Mr. President, for being with us
today on Meet the Press.
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