"Lastly! Lastly!"

In a vortex of paper plates, pop bottles and fluttering fans, 800 sweating delegates of the Philippines' Nacionalista Party met in Manila Hotel's Fiesta Pavilion one day last week to pick their presidential nominee for next November's election. It was hot and noisy, as a good convention should be. But the suspense did not last long.

Across the sea of white shirts and sun-brown faces floated the name of 45-year-old Ramon Magsaysay (pronounced wag-sigh-sigh), the fast-rising, Huk-fighting phenomenon who resigned as Secretary of Defense and quit President Elpidio Quirino's Liberal Party six weeks ago to join the Nacionalistas and wage war on Liberal corruption. Young businessmen, industrialists and army officers, and Filipino housewives--most of them political amateurs with the same kind of contagious enthusiasm as the amateurs for Ike and Stevenson--pitched in with U.S.-style posters and buttons and such slogans as "I sigh for Magsaysay" or "Magsaysay is my guy." Almost until the end, there was some doubt whether the Nacionalista professionals would bow to the amateurs or attempt a last-minute stampede for their beloved leader, Jose Laurel. But Laurel, as he had promised, personally nominated Magsaysay.

Only one Nationalist a tried to stop the tide. Campaigning on the sole plank that the Nacionalista nomination should not go to an upstart so fresh from the opposition Liberals, old Senator Camilo Osias, respected educator and a party man for 40 years, pleaded for the nomination.

Early in his two-hour speech, the delegates listened politely. But as he droned on, the pavilion became clamorous with catcalls, whistles and the rhythmic banging of pop bottles. "Lastly! Lastly!" shouted delegates--meaning that the Senator should make his last point and sit down. Finally, he did. Magsaysay followed him and was brief. "I am a man of action," said he. "Therefore, I am not a speechmaker." Magsaysay sat down to a fervent ovation.

By a vote of 705 to 49, the Nacionalistas chose Ramon Magsaysay. Against President Quirino, his seasoned and clever old boss, Amateur Magsaysay has a good chance--provided the elections can be kept as clean as they were two years ago, when Magsaysay's devoted soldiers did what they could to police the polls.

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