8:30 AM
Off Zamboanga City
on board the 777 before
landing
June 22, 1972
Thursday
Malacañan Palace
Manila
Comparatively pleasant trip. Slight swells and driving raw at about 8:45 PM last night.
Sen. Benigno Aquino, in undisguised relish predicts revolution in the Philippines. Writing in an article “Youth in Revolt” in the Far Eastern Economic Review of June 10, 1972 be gleefully quotes the (not readable) statistics of doom; the economic elite of 1.5%, the 75% poor and the 23.5% middle class; the economic profile – only 2.6% of Filipino families earn P10,000 ($1,538) or more a year, 6.8% earn 5,000 to P9,999 ($769 – $1,538) etc; Cost of education; the drop outs only 32 out of 100 finish elementary education, only 6.2 finish high school, only 4 go to college, only 0.8 get a college degree; Unemployment and underemployment: 1.1 million plus out of a workforce of 12:5 are unemployed, 5 million are underemployed; of the 1,007,133 college educated why 60.6% were employed, of the 1,041,004 with one to three years of college, only 38.3% had work, of the 1,038,306 only 78% had jobs, most being misplaced.
I attached the copy of the review.
Aquino, conversantly forgetting Plaza Miranda and the rice scarcity brought about by calamities with an apparent boast for his supposedly activist – supported bid for the Liberal Party presidential nomination said: “He might have added that activist youth, fragmented in ideology and strategy, was behind the tidal “no” vote given to the Marcos proxies – the candidates handpicked by President and Mrs. Marcos in the last senatorial elections”
And this is the orientation of the whole article – to focus on his strength as a presidential candidate.
The prediction, however, has basis for it. Although the estimate of five to ten years may be too long – or too short.