Smiles in the Barrios

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' Jose Laurel and Recto and Senator Lorenzo Tanada 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 Tanada came to ask me to lead a military coup d'etat. 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 Tanada 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 Tanada. 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.

Here he promised one of his new prefab schoolhouses, there money for a new road. He inspected a new irrigation dam on the Tarlac River, ordered the engineers to use bull carts as well as dump trucks to haul dirt--it would make work for the poor people in the barrios--and delivered his favorite speech: He didn't care what the politicians said about Ramon Magsaysay. They could call him stupid, uneducated, or whatever. He was interested only in the welfare of the poor people. That's why he spent more time seeing them than studying a lot of reports prepared by professors. The crowd laughed and cheered. It was 6 p.m. before his car pulled into the palace again. "You don't know what it means to look at the faces in the barrios," he said. "People smile now. It's only six years since no one smiled and everyone was afraid of his neighbor."

Last week Recto called a press conference to announce his "irrevocable decision" to run for the presidency in November, "whatever the odds and however adverse the circumstances." In the light of Magsaysay's popularity, the circumstances were certainly adverse: the Na tionalists are sure to renominate Magsaysay, and there is a strong possibility the opposition Liberals will too.

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