THE PHILIPPINES: Smiles in the Barrios

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THE PHILIPPINES

Smiles in the Barrios

Politics in the Philippines is simple these days: almost everybody likes President Ramon Magsaysay. But the Filipinos also like politics. Last week the 1957 presidential campaign was launched in the usual way—with a sudden splurge of innuendos and charges of dark intrigues and double-dealing. Magsaysay's chief rival is Senator Claro Recto, a member of his own party and one of the men who first induced Magsaysay to run for President in 1952. An adroit lawyer but a disappointed politician, Recto accused Magsaysay of signing a secret document in 1952 promising to serve only one term if elected President.

Once a Dictator. To everyone's surprise, Magsaysay freely admitted that he had indeed signed a secret pact. Disillusioned by the corruption around him while serving as Defense Minister in the Liberal government of President Elpidio Quirino, Magsaysay agreed to bolt the Liberal Party and accept the Nationalist Party nomination for President. But in his pact with the Nationalists' José Laurel and Recto and Senator Lorenzo Tañada of the Citizen's Party, Magsaysay had made no stipulation about one term, he said. In fact, he told TIME'S James Bell last week, "Laurel and Tañada came to ask me to lead a military coup d'état. I told them I had been a dictator once— when I was running a guerrilla area during the war. I never killed anyone in those days. I didn't want to be a dictator again because this time I might have to." Then Laurel and Tañada came back and asked him to lead a peaceful "crusade to free the country from the morally and finan cially bankrupt Quirino administration," and he agreed.

Documents captured in 1952 on Huk Communist guerrillas, said Magsaysay, listed many top Nationalist politicians as possible collaborators in a popular front. President Quirino planned to use these records to arrest all his top opponents as Communists or fellow travelers, and they knew it. Says Magsaysay: "Quirino even talked about killing Tañada. I wouldn't have anything to do with all this, because these men, whatever they may be, are not Communists. They were all afraid to run. They thought Quirino would have them assassinated. So they all stayed in their foxholes and told me to take my Tommy gun and go out and fight for them." Privately, for all his public charges, Recto concedes that the Nationalists had to pick Magsaysay in 1952.

Contact by Fingertip. Unruffled by all of this political sniping, Magsaysay took off for a Sunday plunge into the provinces, where his popularity is untouchable. Leaving Malacanan Palace at 6 a.m., he sped north into Tarlac province. Wherever a group of Filipinos had gathered along the roadside to wave and cheer, Magsaysay stuck out his hand and Filipinos would reach out and fleetingly brush his fingertips. Their faces lighted up at the contact; so did his. Whenever the crowd was as big as 200, Magsaysay popped out to shake everybody's hand, then walked down the road for a hundred yards or so as the car slowly followed.