THE PHILIPPINES: Cleanup Man

(See Cover)

From Aparri in the north to Zamboanga in the south, Filipinos went to the polls last week. The election was, in some cases, quite literally a matter of life or death. Before the polls even opened, 96 people, some of them candidates, had been killed; more than 100 were kidnaped. On election day itself, 21 were murdered, one of them an election worker right in Manila’s City Hall. There had never been so many casualties in a Filipino election. Nevertheless, just about everyone agreed that it had been a grand success.

For 4,000,000 Filipinos had left their nipa huts and tethered carabaos, their paddies and abaca fields, copra sheds and sugar centrals to cast their votes in a free election. After five years of catching their shirttails and mashing their fingers in the machinery of democracy, imported and installed for them by the U.S., the Filipinos had demonstrated that they were learning how to operate it.

Only Humans Vote. A fighting minority of Filipinos had threatened to make the election a shambles. But the Communist-led Huk* were too disorganized to carry out the threat. The Philippine army, which had dominated past elections as the gun-twirling bully of the politicians in power, dominated this one as the disciplined protector of the voters. Politicians who had ridden into office in 1949 on the votes of “the trees, the birds, the insects and the monkeys” could this time use only human votes.

The proof that the election was honest was incontrovertible: the ins took a terrible shellacking. President Elpidio Quirino, well-meaning but weak, the leader of a party infected with corruption, had come to power in an election as crooked as a hatful of fishhooks. Last week, in almost every reach of the islands, his Liberals lost to the opposition Nacionalistas, led by Jose Laurel, the able but embittered man who was President of the Philippines under Japanese rule. (Collaboration has largely ceased to be a political issue in the Philippines since the late Manuel Roxas, once No. 2 in the puppet regime, became postwar President with the tacit blessing of Douglas MacArthur.)

Nine of the 24 seats in the Senate were at issue. Laurel’s Nacionalistas, with the returns almost complete, appear to have won them all, giving them possible control of the Senate. In Quirino’s capital of Manila, a Nacionalista became mayor by a 3-to-1 majority.

When the returns were in, President Quirino took what comfort he could find. “The election,” said he, “shows that democracy really works on our soil. Democracy will stand here.”

Sparks & Singes. The democratic working was thanks primarily to one man, a tough-minded, energetic political pinwheel named Ramon Magsaysay (rhymes with bog-sigh-sigh). Magsaysay, who is only 44, first flashed into national view in September 1950, when President Quirino appointed him Secretary of Defense, and gave him broad authority. The sparks he has been shooting off since then have singed the once mighty Huks, ignited the tempers of bigwigs in his own Liberal Party, and fired the ardor of the common Filipino all over the islands.

In his 14½ months in office, Magsaysay has brought about great changes in the Philippines. First he rebuilt the army, until then a demoralized, politics-racked conglomeration that couldn’t fight its way out of a bamboo hut with a howitzer. Then he went after the Huks, who were so strong at the time that they were thinking seriously of seizing Manila itself. Last week, with his newly respectable and respected 40,000-man army, and some 10,000 reinforcements from the R.O.T.C. and reserves, he underwrote an election which, for all the bloodshed, gave free voice to the popular will.

To rank & file Filipinos, he has become a national hero. To his boss, President Quirino, he has become at times an embarrassment but, day in & day out, his party’s best asset. To the opposition, he has become an unexpected Good Samaritan for keeping the polls free (they gave him an admiringly inscribed copy of Peace of Mind). To the Western world, too often handicapped in its outer reaches by propped-up Bao Dais and Syngman Rhees, he has brought a glimmer of hope for democracy in the Orient.

Pass the Lapu-Lapu. Ramon Magsaysay, rugged, tall (5 ft. n in.), is a blacksmith’s son from Zambales, a province in western Luzon. He has both Chinese and Spanish blood, and calls himself a mixture of Ilokano and Tagalog, which refers to the dialects his parents speak. He is a table-thumping, toe-tromping activist who would rather hip-shoot a gun at bottles tossed into Manila Bay than put away one of Quirino’s famed two-hour breakfasts at Malacafian Palace, with pancakes, papaya and fried lapu-lapu (a choice fish). He lacks the usual Filipino impulse for orotund oratory, fancy dress and luxurious living. Every month he turns over his 1,000-peso ($500) salary to his pretty, shy wife, Luz. In his five years in politics, he has won an unchallenged reputation for honesty.

Magsaysay has a great regard for the law, but a greater regard for law and order. Last year he persuaded Quirino to suspend the right of habeas corpus for all prisoners suspected of being Huks. “When I’ve decided to punish someone who deserves to be punished,” Magsaysay vows, “nobody can stop me. Nobody! I will send my own father to jail if he breaks the law.”

McKinley’s Prayer. The Filipinos have reason to cheer the rise of Ramon Magsaysay—and the U.S. has reason to be a sympathetic onlooker. For the infant republic of the Philippines is the great—and unfinished—U.S. experiment in transplanting democracy. In its tropical laboratory, among the dying roots of colonialism and the lushly growing thickets of Communism, the U.S. brand of freedom is being tested in the Orient.

So far as most Americans are concerned, they stumbled into the Philippines in their sleep, awakening one morning in May 1898 to learn that Commodore George Dewey had steamed his four cruisers and two gunboats into Manila Bay and said: “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.” (One who wasn’t surprised was Assistant

Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, who had taken advantage of the Secretary’s absence to give Dewey the go-ahead.) It was a heady exploit, and made an overnight hero of Admiral Dewey; the headaches came later.

At that point, many Americans were caught up in the great muscle-flexing passion of Manifest Destiny. They heard Indiana’s Senator Albert J. Beveridge cry: ”’God did not make the American people the mightiest’ human force of all time simply to feed and die … He has made us the lords of civilization . . . The Philippines are ours forever.” They heard President McKinley trying to set his own mind straight: “When … I realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with them … I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance . . .” The guidance McKinley thought he got was that the ILS. should annex the islands; it was the U.S.’s duty to “Christianize” and civilize a nation that had been devoutly Catholic for 200 years before the U.S. was born. “And the next morning I sent for the Chief Engineer of the War Department—our mapmaker—and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the U.S.”

Most Americans probably felt more like Mr. Dooley. “Suppose ye was standin’ at th’ corner iv State Sthreet and Archey R-road,” Mr. Dooley mused. “Wud ye know what car to take to get to th’ Ph’lippeens? If yer son Packy was to ask ye where th’ Ph’lippeens is, cud ye give him anny good idea whether they was in Rooshia or jus’ west iv th’ thracks? . . . An’ what shud I do with the Ph’lippeens? … I can’t annex thim because I don’t know where they ar-re.”

“Philippines for the Filipinos.” The U.S. had suddenly become caretaker of more than 7,000 islands and islets in the Pacific, and manager of the destinies of some 7½ million people. It took four years to subdue the guerrillas in the hills, battling for independence from caretakers—whether Spanish or American. General Arthur MacArthur, whose son was to loom even more largely in Filipino destiny, said of the guerrillas: Let’s civilize ’em with a Krag rifle—and tried to. Then came years of civil rule, under strong and foresighted men like William Howard Taft and Henry Stimson. Taft’s slogan was “The Philippines for the Filipinos.” The U.S., which had always looked down its nose at colonial powers, persuaded itself that it was really engaged in a great anticolonial experiment: to make the Philippines “a show window of democracy.”

A people exploited for 3½ centuries by the Spanish was taught to read,* given good medical treatment, practice in self-government, and the highest standard of living in the Orient. The Americans also planted the imported seeds of civil liberties and free speech.

Mixed Motives. In the 1920s, the U.S. was already talking of giving “our little brown brothers” their independence—for a variety of motives. Powerful U.S. interests (sugar, tobacco, dairy, cottonseed and peanut oil, the West Coast labor unions) objected to the rivalry of cheap Filipino products and cheap Filipino labor. They were joined by U.S. liberals who squirmed when Filipinos quoted U.S. doctrine back at them—i.e., that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. The U.S. gave the Philippines partial independence in 1935, and set the date of complete independence for 1946.

Not until the deed was done did the shortcomings of the great experiment become clear. For all the tremendous good it had wrought, U.S. rule had recognized old Spanish land grants, many of them dubious, which gave a few favored families a stranglehold. Free trade with the U.S. had given the Philippines the bloom of apparent health, but it was a hectic flush: the islands were not prepared to stand on their own economic feet. The sugar kings and wealthy traders had prospered, but thousands of tenant farmers were left in discontented peonage. The seed of freedom had sprouted, but the soil of order on which freedom must grow had been neglected. Above all, in setting a target date for independence so far in advance, the U.S. had not reckoned on World War II.

To Deceive Was Patriotic. When the promised Independence Day came, on July 4, 1946, the Philippines were one great wound of war. Manila was more than 50% destroyed. Everywhere schools, factories, plantations were in ruins.

There was hardly a Filipino family that had not lost at least one member in the war. Three years of Japanese occupation had changed the moral climate of the country. It became necessary and patriotic to cheat, deceive, rob, even kill. The strongest Filipino leaders (e.g., Manuel Quezon) had died. But the U.S., and Filipino politicians, had gone too far to turn back on a promise. So the happy day of independence came.

Washington helped the infant republic with war damage dollars, war surplus, ECA bequests, RFC loans, millions in back pay to Filipino soldiers and guerrillas. Altogether the U.S., in six years, put $2 billion into the Philippines. But the money flowed in without proper planning, or proper safeguards. Instead of going into the mouths or onto the backs of Filipinos, U.S. surplus and relief goods slid from one speculator and profiteer to another. It was a poor trader who could not triple or quadruple his investment in pencils, tractors or derricks.

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Wages for common laborers in Manila stayed at $1 to $3 a day, while the cost of living rose to a point almost three times that of Chicago. In the provinces, landlords continued to take 70% of the crops for themselves, getting interest of 100% to 200% on loans to tenants who were already so deeply in debt that their grandsons would not own enough land to live on or a carabao to plow it.

The American Way. In a democracy, representatives are representative; and the Philippine Congress inhaled the general air of corruption. House Speaker Eugenio Perez, boss of the Liberal Party, became chief of the spoils system. Party funds, for which no accounting is required, are in his keeping. To win votes, he has at his disposal precious Chinese immigration visas to distribute among his congressional colleagues, each of them worth $2,000 to $3,000 at the nearest cafe. When the Commissioner of Customs recently tried to cut expenses by firing 180 excess employees, he was bombarded into retreat by the protests of Congressmen. For importers, heavy tips to customs agents are a necessity. In their eager study of U.S. institutions, Filipino politicos had learned from Hague and Pendergast, as well as from Madison and Jefferson.

Under such pressures, the Filipino economy began to crumble. In the Hong Kong open market the peso fell from two for $1 (par) to four for $1. Most schoolteachers and many soldiers did not get paid regularly. Unable to find work in the cities or make a decent living on the land, more & more Filipinos took to the hills of Luzon, to join the Huks. Once the admired guerrilla army that had fought the hated Japanese, the Huks had been taken over by the Communists. As discontent grew, the Huks grew with it.

By mid-1950 they roamed at will over much of Luzon. In some places they levied taxes, ran their own schools and newspapers, and maintained a string of “production centers.” They had the help and sympathy of thousands of villagers who found them less objectionable than the government itself. Their Politburo met under the nose of the government in Manila and boldly drew up a “strategic plan for the seizure of national power.” At this point, the display in “the show window of democracy” looked pretty shabby.

Taking Ways. But the press was still free and critical, the inaudible masses were eager for something better, and there were still a few politicians unbeholden and uncorrupted. Among them was Ramon Magsaysay.

He had studied engineering at the University of the Philippines, earning his way as a chauffeur. Later he had taken a job as mechanic in a bus company, and wound up as its manager. At war’s outbreak, he went to work in the motor pool of the U.S. 31st Division, and ended the war as commander of a guerrilla army of 10,000. In 1950, as chairman of the House National Defense Committee, he attacked his own party, the Liberals, demanding an end to politics in the army, a real fight against the Huks, and a cleanup of the evils that gave them strength. When Boss Perez tried to quiet him with a few Chinese visas or some campaign donations, Magsaysay tossed them back at him. When politicians kept him from buying Quonset huts he needed as schoolhouses for Zambales, he gathered some of his wartime guerrillas, raided a surplus dump and made off with 140 huts. Later he paid for them—50 centavos (25¢) apiece, the price he figured the profiteer who owned them had paid in the first place.

His goings-on caught the eyes of Manila’s newspapers, who supported him, and of U.S. officials (including able Ambassador Myron M. Cowen), who keep a fatherly eye on the young republic. It was at U.S. urging that Quirino put through needed economic reforms, so that in one year, tax revenues increased by 70%. Quirino also pushed through a new minimum-wage law, which increased the pay of 90% of Filipino wage earners. The U.S. also diplomatically persuaded Quirino that a cleanup of the army and constabulary was overdue, and that Congressman Magsaysay was just the man for it.

“He Eats Before I Eat.” Magsaysay got the job. He moved the Defense Department out of downtown Manila to suburban Camp Murphy, to get it away from the pressures of politicians. Trained to the simple life (he doesn’t drink or smoke, and has never succumbed to the Filipino weakness for gambling), he picked out a modest, one-story cottage at the camp for himself, Luz and their three children. He combed the army for bumbling or corrupt officers, promoted the good ones, and put a revitalized force into the field, with one mission: “Kill Huks.”

In a C-47 called Pag-asa (Tagalog for hope), he toured the islands, dropping in unannounced on one army outpost after another; in regions Pag-asa could not reach, he traveled by car or carabao cart. He gave the soldiers better food, better quarters, promise of advancement. At one post he went out with a patrol to do a little Huk-shooting himself, and handed a battlefield commission to a sergeant who bagged three. At another post he found soldiers sleeping without blankets.

He routed the officers out of bed and made them distribute blankets. “It is the soldier who carries the gun and risks his life,” said Magsaysay. “I must treat him like my own son. He eats before I eat.”

To the demoralized population in Huk country, Magsaysay sent civil officers to explain the new army and to solicit their support. He posted rewards for Huks dead or alive, and saw to it that they were paid. But the claimants had to submit proof, preferably a photograph. He went after the Huks with their own tricks and their own cunning. They dressed their fighters in women’s clothes; so did Magsaysay. They picked at army communications with phony messages and fake letters; Magsaysay disrupted their communications even more with the same tactics and with sharp, well-planned forays.

But most important of all, he struck at the source of the Huk strength—the social conditions that had made them what they were. He sent out word that all who surrendered would be spared, and offered each Huk ten hectares (about 25 acres) and a government-built house in a resettlement project in the lush, underpopulated island of Mindanao.

“They are fighting the government because they want a house and land of their own,” said Magsaysay. “All right, they can stop fighting, because I will give it to them. And if they are not satisfied with that, by golly, I have another big deal for them. I am going to make the Huk a capitalist. I am going to set up a carpentry shop and let the Huks run it.” The Huks began to come in, at first a trickle, then by the hundreds. Many signed up with Magsaysay as special anti-Huk commando teams (“When I turned over arms and ammunition to them, I wondered to myself if I was doing right”). Some 400 made off to the new promised land of Mindanao.

The Huks are still a force to be reckoned with. But they are no longer a threat to Manila, or (in daytime) along the main highways through central Luzon. Six of the Huk Politburo are in jail. When Magsaysay took over, the Huks numbered an estimated 16,000. Now he claims there are only 8,000. Swashbuckling Luis Taruc, the dyed-in-the-Red general of the rebellion, is still at large, but with Magsaysay’s 100,000-peso price on his head, reportedly has become so nervous and distrustful of his own comrades that he will let only his immediate family approach him.

“Don’t Bother Me.” With the Huks calmed down, Magsaysay announced that he was going to police the islandwide elections—an announcement that was greeted by cynical smiles. He went at his apparently hopeless job with a will—and a method. In Pag-asa, he hopped around the country to beagle out phony registrations, restrain the gunnery of rival politicos, and spot the places where his troops were most needed. In one town where preelection killing had broken out, he had the entire police force arrested for murder. In still another, where a Nacionalista candidate had been kidnaped, he jailed the mayor—a Liberal.

Some angry, defeated Liberals wanted to read Ramon Magsaysay out of the party. But President Quirino, alternately jealous and proud of Magsaysay, has an avuncular affection for his Secretary of Defense. He has given Magsaysay extra jobs—among them, running the vital Manila Railroad and Philippines Airlines. Magsaysay himself shrugs his shoulders, twists his eloquent brown face into a broad grin and asks: “How can a person get mad because we hold honest elections? All I did was follow religiously the instructions of the President.

“Now I feel so proud to be a Filipino. We have a great people. With right leadership, with the guidance and the assistance of the United States, this country can grow to be the head of a family of democratic nations in this part of the globe.”

Freedom & Order. For a country sorely in need of both policemen and statesmen, Ramon Magsaysay has proved to be a great cop. Has he the makings of a statesman, too? It is still too early to tell. But some of his countrymen are already calling him “the Eisenhower of the Pacific.” When he showed up on Manila’s docks last week to welcome home his election policemen, the crowd mobbed him and sent up a chant: “Mabuhay [long live] Magsaysay, our next President!”

Whatever happens to Ramon Magsaysay, he is teaching his country an invaluable lesson—a lesson which is still being learned, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, where millions have recently won their freedom, sometimes before they are ready for it. The lesson is that real freedom can exist only with order.

-Originally known as the “Hukbo ng bayan laban sa hapon” (People’s Army Against Japan), the Huk movement now has a new name: “Hukbo ng mapagpalaya sa bayan” (People’s Liberation Army). -Literacy in the Philippines is now 50%, highest in Southeast Asia. Others: Malaya, 32%; Indo-China, 15%; Indonesia, 6%.