He Promises to End Corruption
The new President of the Philippines, Diosdado Macapagal, has long appealed to the electorate as a tao (common man) who will never forget his humble beginnings. “I come from the poor. Let me reap for you the harvest of the poor. Let us break the chain of poverty. Let me lead you to prosperity!” he cried at his campaign whistle stops. “I have sat at the sumptuous tables of power, but I have not run away with the silverware.”
Stocky and quick-smiling, Macapagal (pronounced Mock-a-pa-gahl) was born 51 years ago in a palm-frond hut in rice-growing Pampanga province, north of Manila. His first name means “God-given” in Spanish. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic who taught catechism to schoolchildren, and his father wrote poetry in the local dialect. Since poets do no better financially in the Philippines than anywhere else, Diosdado Macapagal’s family was often hungry.
As a child, Diosdado tended the big, black water buffaloes that are the Philippine beasts of burden, stole out at night to catch frogs in the rice fields for food, and did well enough in the village school to be named class valedictorian. He would have been too ashamed of his clothes to appear, if a generous neighbor had not supplied him with a white shirt and a pair of canvas shoes.
Macapagal’s mother raised pigs and took in boarders to see him through high school, and he went on to the university while holding down a minor job as an accountant. After two years, he had to quit school because of ill health and lack of money. Returning to Pampanga, he joined a boyhood friend, handsome Rogelio de la Rosa, in writing, producing and acting in Tagalog operettas patterned after the classic Spanish zarzuelas. Macapagal married his friend’s sister (she died during the war, and he is now married to handsome Evangelina Macaraeg, a physician). As for De la Rosa, he went on to star in Tagalog films, becoming known as the “Clark Gable of the Philippines”; in the recent campaign, he also ran as an independent for the presidency, but withdrew to back Macapagal ten days before the election.
From his show business experience, Macapagal earned enough money to go back to school, and soon a Pampanga philanthropist relieved him of all worry by offering to finance his education at the University of Santo Tomas. Graduating in 1936, Macapagal scored the highest grades of all candidates in the bar exams and was soon a legal assistant to Philippine President Manuel Quezon. During the war, Macapagal quit as law professor at Santo Tomas to serve as an intelligence agent with the anti-Japanese underground.
From the Philippine House of Representatives, he moved to his country’s U.N. delegation (in 1951 Macapagal had a notable verbal clash about Communist aggression with Russia’s Andrei Vishinsky) and on to the vice presidency, polling 117,000 more votes in 1957 than the winning candidate for President, Carlos Garcia.
Macapagal’s political program is more rhetorical than specific, but he has promised to welcome foreign investment, protect local industry, get the government out of nationalized business, and to bring “decency and prosperity” to the Philippines. He has pledged himself to the “principle of command responsibility” on graft. By that he means that “I expressly hold myself responsible, morally and politically to the people, for malfeasance by members of my Cabinet, for the acts of my family and my intimates, for the general state of morality of the government, and for failure to take prompt and vigorous action.”
If he means it, and can do it, a new day will dawn for the Philippines.
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