The Philippines: Uncle Sam’s Other Island

History-minded visitors to the Philippines often feel they have traveled by Time Machine back to an earlier America. So many Filipinos tote pistols that nightclubs, restaurants, government buildings and even the Philippine Air Lines insist in true Western style that customers check their firearms at the entrance. Prosperous Filipino business men, like the U.S. robber barons of the 1890s, build ornate homes in Manila’s luxurious suburb of Forbes Park, where special police with carbines guard the streets against tough intruders from the slums. Bandits roam the back country, and pirates aboard motor launches raid docks and fishing boats.

Roosevelt Mantle. Philippine politics is as serious, and as lethal, as was American politics in the age of Andrew Jackson. In a single Luzon province, 114 “political” murders took place this year. In last week’s national and municipal elections, the Philippines moved on from the age of Jackson to the age of Roosevelt — at least on the slogan level. President Diosdado Macapagal, 53, us ing “New Era” instead of “New Deal” and calling for the support of “the common man,” led his Liberal Party against the opposition Nacionalistas, supported by most businessmen and landowners.

The contest most vital to Macapagal was for eight seats in the 24-man Philippine Senate, where, he complains, the twelve Nacionalista Senators have thwarted his ambitious programs for land reform, industrialization and control of inflation. Wearing his traditional baseball cap with its presidential insignia, and clad in a white barong tagalog (a light, loose-sleeved shirt), Macapa gal stumped the grass roots explaining his aims of “making capitalists out of workers.”

His role of defender of the poor in a country where one-fifth of the workers are underemployed should have made Macapagal vastly popular. Curiously, he is not. Partly, the reason is that in the Philippines, as elsewhere, popularity is based on personality rather than on policies. After two years in office, “Da-dong” Macapagal is just not very lik able. Filipinos are dismayed by his lack of humor, and ridicule his do-gooder proclamations calling for “moral regeneration.” He is criticized for putting all his friends from his home province of Pampanga into administration jobs, and the charge is hurtful because most other Filipinos think the people of Pampanga are idle, spendthrift and treacherous. Says a Manila businessman: “Filipinos elect Presidents for the sport of knocking them down.”

Even acts of foresight have backfired. When inflation sent rice costs soaring, Macapagal dispatched trucks into the barrios to sell rice at a subsidized price half that of the retail trade. The long queues, called pilas, exposed customers to broiling sun and drenching rain, and rage instead of gratitude. In a Manila cinema a newsreel of Macapagal brought boos and shouts of “Pila! Pila!” A month before the elections, the government abandoned the “rolling stores” and switched to neighborhood rationing, with the subsidized rice handled in local shops.

Inflationary Stem. Despite his shortcomings, Macapagal has made the first intelligent approach in years to the government and development of the Philippines. Land reform is on the books and progressing slowly in the provinces; the economic growth rate, just under 6% last year, is estimated to be doing about as well now. A firm friend of the U.S. and a dependable antiCommunist, Macapagal hopes that foreign investment can help stem inflation. What a visitor thinks about the Philippines’ prospects depends largely upon his port of departure. “If you come here from Japan or Europe or America, you might think it’s hopeless here,” said a Liberal Senator. “But if you’re coming from India or Indonesia, you can really see how well off we are.”

On election day last week, Macapagal drove to his home town of Lubao in Pampanga province to cast his ballot. Then he returned to his baroque Malacanang palace in Manila to await the decision of some 7,500,000 voters. He predicted that the Liberals would win six of the eight contested seats, but at week’s end, with only a few districts unreported, Liberals were leading in only four of the senatorial contests—just enough to give Macapagal control of the Senate by two votes.