MALACAÑAN PALACE
Manila
10:40 PM
March 8, 1970
Sunday
What worries me most now is the prices and the apparent scarcity of essentials. We set aside $2 million monthly for essentials beginning January, and this was at the old rate. And yet there seems to be scarcity. I have asked Sec. Leo Virata to get together with Greg Licaros to bring in essentials through Namarco which must be reactivated if necessary. Even in the provinces soap and sardines seem to be deficient. If this is not attended to, this could be a cause for disorders. And reports indicate the Chinese are hoarding. The communists could very well be in this too. This bears watching.
Imelda brought the children and the Martel and Kokoy Romualdez families to Pagsanjan, up the rapids under the falls and down again. They apparently enjoyed the trip. Stayed at Malacanang to finish my work and think after reading the book The Strategy of Deception by Jeane J. Kirpatrick, a study in worldwide communist tactics. Her thesis is the alleged inevitable class struggle and victory of the proletarian class has been disproved by history and that Communists in practice are less doctrinaire than expedient. Theirs is realpolitik, less ideology. All they seek, in short is power, no matter what and the liberal democrats should meet them with the same objectivity and reality. The book disproves every single theory of Marx.