Here Comes Charley

When mild little Carlos Garcia took over as President of the Philippines after the plane-crash death of the nation's beloved Ramon Magsaysay last March, Garcia announced, in a paraphrase of Harry Truman, that he felt as if he had been hit by a ton of bricks.* Like Truman, he was a faithful member of an old political machine, was picked as Vice President on straight party considerations, and seemed no man to fill his predecessor's larger shoes. Charley Garcia, 60, was expected to serve out the remaining nine months of Ramon Magsaysay's term, and then agreeably take a comfortable political sinecure to get out of the way.

Nothing but Nice Things. But Garcia resembled Harry Truman in another way: he was determined to make it on his own, and he had a way of confounding the experts. Last week in Manila, as the last of 1,300 delegates to Garcia's (and Magsaysay's) Nacionalista Party convention packed up to go home, Garcia had the presidential nomination in his pocket (with 888 votes on the first ballot). At Garcia's feet lay the defeated Nacionalista paladins who had sought to deny him the nomination, including Nacionalista Party Boss Eulogio ("Amang") Rodriguez, Garcia's onetime mentor, who went down to defeat with 69 votes, and bitter, professionally anti-American Claro Recto, Magsaysay's most implacable enemy, who won a humiliating 14 votes.

Even by Philippine standards, it had been quite a convention. Garcia's task force took over the fancier Dewey Boulevard's nightclubs to entertain the delegates. Everything, including the samba-happy hostesses, was on the house. Delegates were met at airports, bus and rail stations by Garcia men who eagerly pressed a little convention spending money (from about $150 to $250, depending on the delegate, said Garcia's opponents) into their hands, guided them off forthwith to Dewey Boulevard.

Welcome the Day Shift. When the convention formally opened at Santa Ana race track in Manila's suburb of Makati, the delegates passed through turnstiles where they were shaken down by khaki-clad cops, standing beside signs that read: "Please Deposit Your Firearms and Deadly Weapons Here." Dutifully, 39 delegates deposited gats the first day.

As they left the turnstiles, the delegates were set upon immediately by bevies of bosomy beauties wearing "Garcia for President" sashes over their decolletage. "Ah," said one red-eyed delegate, "I see the day shift has taken over." Garcia opponents complained that the Garcia buttons pinned on delegates' lapels often had 10-peso bills under the button. The free sandwiches, similarly equipped, came to be known as "peso sandwiches."

Candidate Garcia himself was at a command post five miles away playing chess with his military aide, broke off the game briefly to intervene when he feared that his floor handlers might ineptly let the first ballot be taken Sunday morning instead of Saturday night. Warned experienced Old Pol Garcia: "You can never tell what will happen during twelve dark hours."

With Garcia nominated, and the Nacionalista Party thus returning to pre-Magsaysay normalcy, Manila sat back to await the convention of the opposition Liberal Party, headed by 62-year-old Jose Yulo, onetime Philippine correspondent for John Foster Dulles' legal firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, and co-author (with U.S. Army Major Dwight D. Eisenhower*) of the first law passed by the new Philippine commonwealth in 1935.

Tea & Firearms. Jose Yulo's Liberal Party convention was no competition for the Nacionalistas in the Dewey Boulevard fleshpots. Jose Yulo wanted it that way, to contrast his party and Carlos Garcia's, since the Liberal Party is still trying to live down its reputation for corruption during the Quirino administration. Yulo gave one sedate, nonalcoholic tea to receive the delegates, 95% already pledged to him. There were no bosomy Yulo boosters and no peso sandwiches, but a fair number of Liberals obediently checked their firearms at the door.

Yulo had the nomination in the bag. But the first major blow to his campaign was his failure to win the support of Manuel (Manny) Manahan, 41, a man with a magnetic touch in the barrios whom many Filipinos regard as a potential second Magsaysay (TIME, May 13). Manahan refused to unite his Progressives with Yulo's Liberals unless nominated for Vice President, and Yulo had already pledged the job to able, 46-year-old Diosdado Macapagal, who has the necessary political asset of having also been a close friend of Magsaysay, and though a member of the opposition, was Magsaysay's voice on foreign affairs in the House of Representatives.

The news of Manny Manahan's decision to run on his own was wafted to pleased Carlos Garcia, cruising in Manila Bay on the presidential yacht Santa Maria. He hoped that Manahan's decision would split the vote of the anti-Garcia Magsaysay forces. The election will not be until November, but with both major conventions out of the way, Garcia at the beginning of the race has to be reckoned a slight favorite.

*Said Harry Truman to reporters after death of Franklin Roosevelt, "I don't know if any of you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on him. But last night the whole weight of the moon and the stars fell on me."

*Yulo says the law was really written by Major Eisenhower, that he took Ike's draft paragraphs, cut them out and pasted them into the proper order to constitute the proposed law (a defense measure), and sent it off to President Manuel Quezon, who rammed it through Congress without a change. Yulo, who used to play golf with Ike at Canlubang Country Club, quotes Major Eisenhower as exclaiming in wonder: "This is legislation by shears."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.