The Filipino First Policy

“If the Filipinos cannot be first in the Philippines, where else can they be first? Only when Filipinos are first in their country will the Philippines be finally truly free. Until then, their independence can only be a sham. While aliens control the economy, how can Filipinos be said to be masters in their homes or their government is sovereign in their lands? They are mere hirelings, dummies, servants – subservient to the will of others, serving their interests first. How can Filipinos advance their own?”

(Editor’s Note: One of the statements of the late President Carlos P. Garcia about the “Filipino First Policy”).

FILIPINO – FIRST - POLICY AND INDUSTRIAL DISPERSAL

By Former President Carlos P. Garcia

(Editor’s Note: This speech, written by then President Carlos P. Garcia on March 11, 1971 in Quezon City, was delivered before the MINSUPALA Constitutional Seminar at Zamboanga held on March 13 – 14, 1971. The content of the speech, published in the book entitled: CARLOS P. GARCIA, RADIANT  SYMBOL OF FILIPINISM… by Mr. Gregorio Eronico, Sr.,  articulates the President’s Filipino-First-Policy)

(Notes on speech of Former President Carlos P. Garcia delivered before the MINSUPALA Consittutional Seminar at Zamboanga City March 13 – 14, 1971).

            One of the outstanding policies that characterized my administration as President was historically knows as the “Filipino-First-Policy.” The important objective was to make the Filipinos first and supreme in the national economic household of the Philippines. For 400 years when we were under foreign domination the economic policy of this country had been defined and carried out principally for the benefit of the colonial power that at the time ruled us. But since 1946, when we regained independence and became a sovereign nation, we started to define our national economic policy mainly for the benefit of the Filipino people. It is not an easy task to carry out or implement this policy because the roots of the foreign economic domination for 400 years penetrated so deep and wide into our soil that in order to achieve quick results we have had to resort to violent confiscatory measures of foreign properties, trample upon rights guaranteed by the Constitution and incur the hostile attitude of all peoples and governments of the world right at the start of our own independent existence.

            True, the right of the sovereign Philippine nation to be first and supreme in their economic household is legitimate and undeniable in the same way that the Americans want to be supreme in the United States, the Japanese in Japan, the Spaniards etc., but we have to do this respecting the constitutional rights of aliens. It had to be a slow long-range policy.