Excerpts from Time Article “THE PHILIPPINES: Powder Keg of the Pacific”, Monday, Sept. 24, 1979

..Growing number of other Filipinos however, are no longer willing to give Marcos the benefit of any doubt. Reason: the average citizen is being squeezed as never before. A slump in the world price of sugar, which is the mainstay of Philippine exports, higher oil costs and looming general recession have aggravated every painful symptom of the ailing economy. Inflation is expected to exceed 30% this year, and many families must spend 70% to 80% of their total income just on food. ‘If that goes much higher in the next year,’ said one worried diplomat, ‘anything could happen.’

For millions, their country’s poverty means hunger and starvation. Government surveys show that serious malnutrition affects 30% of all Filipino children and as many as 80% in the poorest provinces. Marcos’ ambitious wife Imelda, 50, who serves as a king of velvet glove to his iron hand, has made the fight against hunger one of her well publicized projects. At her ultramodern Nutrition Center of the Philippines in Manila, visitors are shown an elaborate audiovisial presentation of current schemes: ‘Nutribuses,’, ‘Nutrinoodles’ and ‘Nutripaks’ of dried food in cellophane envelopes supposedly distributed to the poor. In fact, Mrs. Marcos programs affect only a small minority of the hungry.

Reported TIME correspondent Ross H. Munro after a visit to Negros Occidental: ‘Nowhere does the gurl between Nutrition Center show business and reality seem wider than in the provincial hospital of Bacolod. The hostpital’s ‘Nutriward’ has a total capacity of only twelve children, all suffering from marasmus, a sever form of malnutrition. The young patients seem to have been transplanted from the famines in Bangladesh and the sub-Sahara earlier in the decade. Big eyes staring from skeletal heads, matchstick limbs, bloated bellies. A priest of the province gloomily estimated that 70% of his parishioners do not have enough to eat: ‘Two meals a day, just some rice and vegetables; fish is a luxury.’

One hospital worker at Bacolod angrily told Munro that several patients had dies for lack of medicine after a former administrator looted the institution of more than $500,000. In Manila, a US drug company executive says bribery is so ingrained in the system of government procurement of medicine that he forbids his salesmen to solicit business from the Health Ministry. While expressing admiration for many Filipino businessmen and technocrats, George Suter, head of Pfizer Inc. of the Philippines and president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila, shrugs: ‘They have to pay off.’

Corruption today is endemic in the Philippines, and there are countless stories in Manila of how graft has enriched friends and relatives of the presidential family. One scheme that apparently generates enormous bribes is the system of government guarantees for loans made by foreign lenders to Filipino businessmen. The going rate for such guarantees is said to be 10% of the value of the loan – unless the Filipino businessmen has the right connections with key figures in the Marcos government.

The system of graft has filtered down, most notably in the military. Soldiers manning checkpoints in the countryside regularly shake down farmers for a fixed tribute: 30c for every sack of copra going to the market. Members of the paramilitary Philippine Constabulary are widely accused of extorting protection money from village storekeepers on penalty..

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