THE PHILIPPINES: The Lonely Election

By early afternoon on election day, only a few people hurried to the polls along the palm-shaded streets of Bacolod City, capital of Occidental Negros Province in the Philippines. As the voters entered the rickety, paper-covered polling booths they glanced nervously at the carbine-carrying, khaki-clad youths who lounged ominously outside; they were members of the 1,500-strong “special police” hired by provincial Governor Rafael Lacson to make sure that the election would turn out the way he wanted it. Police carried off ballot boxes to his home an hour before the polls closed; some ballots had been marked and laid away two weeks before.

The U.S. had hoped that, after a half century of democratic American tutelage, the Philippines had been made safer for democracy than any other country in Asia; last week’s national elections for a new President and Congress rudely upset that hope. Not everywhere were conditions as bad as in Occidental Negros Province; U.S. correspondents found that in Manila, the capital, balloting on the whole seemed to be honest. But in most other parts of the islands, the elections were marked by fraud, intimidation and violence.

Fast Pesos. A Bacolod shopkeeper told an American: “In the old days, election day was like a fiesta. People stayed for hours to talk outside the polling places. Today they are afraid. As soon as they vote, they run back and stay in their homes. This is the loneliest election I have ever seen.”

Winner of the lonely election was Elpidio (“Pidiong”) Quirino, who became President last year after the death of Manuel Roxas. Breezy and genial, Quirino tries, at his meetings with reporters, to act like President Truman at White House press conferences, plugs his own version of the Fair Deal for the Philippines. His big selling point is his friendship with the U.S. (he wangled an invitation to visit the U.S. last summer). Filipinos generally regard him as personally honest, but much of his administration is corrupt and he is surrounded by politicians who cannot resist a chance to make a fast peso.

Quirino’s chief opponent was rabble-rousing, Yale-educated José P. Laurel, the islands’ puppet President under the Japanese. “If collaboration means helping your people to live and survive,” said Laurel on the stump, “I would do it over again.” Through the campaign Laurel worked desperately to rid himself of a reputation for being anti-American; he never quite shook it off. He also made much of his personal honesty, which Filipinos accept. But between the Quirino and Laurel machines, Filipinos had a Hobson’s choice. No one doubts that Laurel’s followers would be as corrupt as Quirino’s if their candidate became President.

The third contender was José Avelino, former head of Quirino’s own Liberal Party. He was kicked out as Senate president last year when, it was charged among other things, he made $22,500 selling government-owned beer.

By latest count this week Quirino was clearly in, with nearly 1,125,000 votes. Laurel was second, with about 930,000, and Avelino a limping last with nearly 237,000. It seemed certain that Quirino’s party had gained clear-cut control of both houses of the Philippine Congress.

Sudden Death. It had been a rough campaign, culminating in a tragic election day. Such words as “quisling,” “grafter” and “renegade” were tossed around freely. Bullets as well as names hissed through the air. The confirmed total of dead was more than 30; in remote Lanao Province on Mindanao (where Filipinos cracked that “even the birds and the trees voted”), 78 Moros were reported killed. In Carcar, Cebu Province, a law student and his brother were shot to death by a policeman when they refused to show the cop how they had marked their ballots. Sighed a friend of the dead student: “He knew his law too well.”

Democracy in the Philippines had received a black eye, but it was far from dead. Cabled TIME Correspondent Frank Gibney: “The mass of Filipinos, like their President, are overwhelmingly pro-American. They want to live in a democracy. If they have been ineffectual in preventing the fraud of their politicians, they have at least recognized the fraud and are disgusted by it. To this extent the teachings of democracy have taken root here. Most Filipinos are resolved that elections like those of 1949 will never happen again.”