First and Last: Make My Day - 38

About the BOOK, FIRST AND LAST In Book 34, LESS AND MORE, Henares started a unique format for his subsequent books, a series of daily articles called POTPOURRI, arranged chronologically to provide a narrative of a particular part of our history, the first years of the Cory Administration starting from 1986 after the fall of Marcos to mid-1988 after the suicide of Jaime Ongpin. Book 34, LESS AND MORE covers May 29, 1986 to April 27, 1987. Book 35, STOP AND GO covers May 17, 1987 to June 16, 1987. Henares skips 2 books and continues POTPOURRI in this book, Book 38, FIRST AND LAST, which covers August 2, 1987 to November 1, 1987. The coming books, Book 39, VICTORY AND DEFEAT, and Book 40, ALPHA AND OMEGA will complete the Series up to June 1988. Henares admits that he sometimes repeats or reprises articles that he had written before and after, in other books, and justifies it so as to close some gap in the continuing narrative. A great portion of the book details the role of Central Bank Governor Jobo Fernandez, holdover from the late unlamented Marcos Martial Law, and newly appointed Secretary of Finance Jaime Ongpin of the Cory Administration to deliver the nation into the clutches of the American CIA, the US Embassy, the American Chamber of Commerce and the IMF/ World Bank, subject by law to the dictates of the US Secretary of Commerce - which Henares considers TREASON of the highest order. (1) Our entire Armed forces are dedicated to enforce the Low Intensity Conflict doctrine of the American Central Intelligence Agency, by which non-whites fight each other to save precious American lives. Our NICA is required by an Exchange of Information Agreement to spy on our people for the CIA. Our AFP are required to kidnap, torture and kill the best and the brightest of our students, labor leaders and professors perceived to be against American corporate monopoly or against the American Bases; to kidnap, torture and kill priests, local and foreign, doctors and do-gooders or anyone perceived to be sympathetic to the wretched and the disadvantaged and in favor of the Liberation Theology of preferential option for the poor. (2) The Philippine Government has committed to pay in full all the immoral loans negotiated between Marcos cronies and dishonest American suppliers who connive to overprice and cheat our country. This includes a strategy to pay them in full even though many countries contrive to pay their foreign loans at 20 % of face value in secondary markets. (3) Our economic leaders are committed to follow IMF prescriptions never to industrialize, but to give priority to ＂an import-export type of plantation economy, based on agriculture, the import of manufactured products and export of cheap raw materials and cheap labor. (4) Our Secretary of Finance insist on imposing retrogressive taxes on things we buy, like E-Vat, or taxes on food or fuel - and reducing progressive taxes on income - shifting the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the poor who have to pay a relatively bigger portion of their income for taxes than the rich and foreign corporations do. There is a pathological quirk in our character that moves us to appoint to our highest offices Filipinos who are ＂acceptable＂ to the Americans -- something no other nation in the whole world would even countenance. We delude ourselves into thinking that officials friendly to Americans can get more concessions than those who assume an adversarial posture. The bargaining table we then find is not a marriage bed, it is a battlefield. We need a negotiator fully committed to our side, as the American negotiator is committed to theirs. In other words, what the Americans are allowed to do is to CHOOSE the Filipino official they will be dealing with. Secretary of Foreign Affairs and National Defense must be sufficiently anti-communistic and anti-nationalistic to ensure compliance with American policies. More important, the Secretary of Finance must (MORE INSIDE)