The Political philosophy of Manuel L. Quezon

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Part of Panorama

Title: The Political philosophy of Manuel L. Quezon
Language: English
Source: Panorama Volume XVIII (No. 4) April 1966
Year: 1966
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Abstract: This memorable speech delivered by Senator Claro M. Recto at the Philippine Columbian Club, on the 75th birthday anniversary of President Manuel L. Quezon
Fulltext: ■ This memorable speech delivered by Senator Claro M. Recto at the Philippine Columbian Club, on the 75th birthday anniversary of President Manuel L. Quezon is a remarkable analysis of the political life and genius of Quezon as compared to the re cord of his successors of today. THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MANUEL L. QUEZON I have been asked to speak to you tonight on the poli tical philosophy of Manuel Luis Quezon. If by political philosophy we mean a system of integrated principles con sistently followed as a [ for political action, then Ma nuel Luis Quezon had none. As I recall our association in the past, both as habitual antagonists and as occasional allies, that is the only con clusion at which I can honest ly arrive, and it finds sup port in his own autobio graphy, The Good Fight. No slight is meant by this assertion upon his illustrious memory. As a politician, Quezon was, first and fore most, a realist and there is nothing wrong with a poli tician being a realist. On the contrary, politics is one struggle theorists can. hardly survive. Senator Tanada’s Citizens will do well to pon der on this eternal truth. I was saying that Quezon had no political philosophy, practiced or avowed. If he had a philosophy, it was empiBjcism in its most rudi mentary and instinctive form, guide An any particular political a Ma- situation, Quezon did wha~t| situation, Quezon am wnatj was politically useful and/ xonvenient, whether or noi • was consistent with an' preconceived and formal pro" gram ot action. _He was! good fighter, and,~above all, master political strategisi‘ and tactician whose consum ing and overriding objective was victory.. Every politician, if he is jo^-be successful, must tbe ap opportunist in the better sense of the term: and QueSon, the consummate politiill how "cian, knew best 6F"ah now to take advantage of every opportunity. That is not im plying that he was unprinci pled. He believed in repreApril 1966 51 sentative democracy, and, 1 shall show later on, preserved and guarded the electoral processes with loyalty and sincerity. He believed in our political independence, in the historic destiny of the Malayan race to which it was his pride publicly to pro claim that he belonged, and built his entire career on the ideal of nationalism. But these beliefs, these convictions, these principles — if you wish to call them that —, did not and could not provide him with a po litical philosophy, distinctly his own. Every Filipino was for democracy and a repub lican form of government. Every Filipino was for inde pendence and national sove reignty. After the death of the "Partido Federal”, which occurred before the elections for the First Philippine As sembly, the political battles of his time were fought, not upon these issues, which could not divide the nation, but upop the rivalry, more or less concealed, for fac tional power and personal leadership. In those circums tances a political philosophy was unnecessary; it might even be a disadvantage. Thus (Quezon was proAmerican when the Airienra~n administration was fayorahlA To -hk party and to hk 1pa_ dexship. and _ _anti-American when it. waT noL He was pro-American under the Wil son administration and its Quezon-made representative in the Philippines, Governor Francis Burton Harrison; he was anti-American under the Republican administrations of Coolidge and Hoover and their rugged pro-consul here, General Leonard Wood; and , he was pro- American once more under the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his faithful vicar in Manila, our beloved Frank Murphy. When he quarrelled with Governor General Wood, he announced dramatically his preference for a government run like hell by Filipinos — a desire, I might observe, that at long last has been sa tisfied — to a government run like heaven by Ameri cans, and accused his politi cal opponents, the Democratas, of cooperating with the Americans against the true interests of the nation. But having won his point and elected Ramon Fernandez 52 Panorama that his political leadership would be threatened by Osmena and Roxas, who had obtained the approval of the independence act in the Am erican Congress. He excoriat ed the bill as a 'fraud, de nounced the retention of American bases as an into lerable infringement on our f future sovereignty, and fore told the darkest calamities if over Juan Sumulong in a special poll in the old 4th senatorial district of Manila, Rizal, Laguna and Bataan, he promptly proceeded to co operate with General Wood’s apparently more complaisant successors, like the aristocra tic Governor Stimson, whom he proclaimed the best Gov ernor-General the Philippines f ever had. v His party was brought to national power by the slogan of “Immediate, Absolute, and Complete Independence,” but, when he was resident commissioner in Washington, eager to return home with a personal triumph, he endors ed and won congressional and presidential approval for the Jones Bill, which made independence c o n t i n gent upon the vague condition of the lestabjishment of a stable! government, and later he again gave his support to the Fairfield Bill, which pro vided for independence at the end of a 25-year transition period. We are still familiar with the historic controversy over the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill. Quezon secured its rejection by the Philippine Legislature independence were accept^ i upon its terms. But when he himself brought back in triumph the Tydings-McDuffie Act, he proclaimed it to be entirely satisfactory although it did not differ in any essential , from the bill he had so ve hemently. assailed. This was>, in my considered judgment, the finest hour of his long political career. The Hare-Hawes-Cutting bill had been maneuvered through the United States Congress only with the greatest difficulty, to the extent of that Con gress repassing it over the veto of President Hoover. Osmena and Roxas had po werful friends in the Ameri can Congress, and Roxas was so sure Quezon would never be able to secure another inbecause he foresaw correctly dependence act after the reApril 1966 53 jection of the Hare-HawesCutting bill, that he public ly promised to go on bended knees to the pier and kiss Quezon’s foot if the latter succeeded in doing so. It was a challenge that no one, perhaps not Quezon himself, believed could be met. But Quezon, ever the realist and empiricist, raised here a fund of about half a million pesos, and by judi ciously expending it in Washington performed the political miracle of the de cade by securing the enact ment of a new independence bill: the Tydings-McDuffie. With such masterful and spell-binding victories, what did Quezon care if some dis gruntled enemies accused him of inconsistency? *He was a political philosophy unto himself, fie must have drawn inspiration from those Whigs in the early years of the Eng lish Parliament, who, in the words of Maurois, showed “a ceremonious respect for the Crown even when they were dethroning kings”, and who could "advance the most daring ideas in the most ar chaic style, and utter the word democracy with an aris tocratic drawl.” politi/It is about time that we scrap the legend that Quezon was a sincere and a frank, brutally frank, politician. It was the silliest, shallowest judgment ever passed upon that great man. It does him an i n j us t i c e, because it charges him with naivete, the worst insult to a brilliant and skillful player in the game of power politics. zon. was a successful_____ cian precisely because he was a master of political intrigue. He knew how to build strong and loyal friendships even among political opponents, but he knew also how to ex cite envy, distrust, ambition, jealousy, even among his own loyal followers. Many a gar den of Eden was lost to the unwary politicians that inha bited them, because of the serpents he quietly let loose and nurtured there. He play ed Roxas against Osmena, Yulo and Paredes against Roxas, Sumulong against Montinola, the Herald against the Tribune, the Alunan group and the plan tadores against the Yulo group and the centralistas in the sugar industry, dominat ing both by means of the loan-giving and loan-denying 54 Panorama power of the Philippine Na tional Bank. He caused Gen eral Mascardo to form his own organization of veterans to counteract the one founded by General Aguinaldo. While Doha Aurora was a fervent and devoted Catholic, he had on his side the Masons and free thinkers, Protestants and Aglipayans, until he himself became a Catholic convert some time before he ran for the Presidency of the Com monwealth. He combined with the Democratas against the Osmenistas in 1922, and then nimbly abandoned them in the same year and coales ced again with the Osmenistas to organize the House of Representatives, only to desert the Osmenistas and again combine with the De mocratas in 1934 for the re jection of the Hare-HawesCutting l?iw. If political philosophy re quires consistency, then Que zon never allowed it to bo ther or disturb his plans. When he challenged the lea dership of Osmena, he at tacked it as dictatorial, “unipersonalista,” and rallied to his side all the discontented members of his party with the pledge of a collective lea dership, a leadership that would be “colectivista.” But having won his fight, and Osmena having humbly ac cepted his defeat, while giv ing Quezon an oblique les son in party discipline by re legating himself to the self described position of a buck private (ultimo soldado), Quezon became even more “unipersonalista” than Os mena, although he concealed his stranglehold on the party with more finesse, contriving to make his followers believe that they themselves were de ciding what he had already determined in advance. But, as Disraeli said of Sir Robert Peel, protectionist in the Op position, free trader on the Treasury. Bench, “you must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession." In that same struggle for, party leadership, Quezon did not hesitate to use the State University as his political forum, and raised the enthu siasm of the stud^pfg W favor But when Roxas, durmg the Pro-Anti fight, turn ed the trick against him, he castigated the students for meddling in politics, hotly advised them to stick to their April 1966 55 books, and criticized their mentors for allowing the aca demic sanctum to be sullied with politics. In those days the rule of decency still pre vailed, and Quezon’s reproof was sufficient to bring about Rafael Palma’s resignation as President of the University of the Philippines. He made the ringing decla ration that his loyalty to his party ended when his loyal ty to his country began, in order to justify his revolt against Osmena. But having established his own leader ship he enforced loyalty to party so effectively that no one of his followers thought it could be different from loyalty to country. And yet his penetrating political "intellect sometimes betrayed him. When we were writing the Constitution he was in perfect accord with us that we should provide for a single presidential term of six years, but having been elected president, and having served four of those six years, he allowed himself to be, so to speak, flattered by a group of sycophants into having a constitutional amen dment adopted to permit his reelec tion and lengthen his term to eight years. He sought my support believing I could lend authority to the amend ment because I had been the President of the Constitu tional Convention, but I curtly declined. This brought a breach in our friendship which was never healed. He died before we could become frankly reconciled, but not before, in pursuit of the same obsession, he had persuaded the United States Congress into suspending our Consti tution and allowing him to remain as president-in-exile for the duration of the war. But the usually sagacious and provident Quezon had not made allowances for the inscrutable decrees of destiny. Exile and later death remov ed him from the presidency upon the expiration of his original 6-year term. I am convinced that a mysterious providence has given its sanc tion to the original decree of the Constitutional Conven tion that no president shall be reelected, arid it cannot be defied with impunity. Osmena lost the 1946 elec tions, and Roxas was sudden ly struck down in 1948 in the midst of his own prepara tions to run for a second 56 Panorama term. The over-ambitious, the over-reaching, the powermad fools who now live in a paradise of their own ima gining, might do well to be ware of this historic taboo and this fateful curse against a presidential reelection. But no grim forebodding haunted . Manuel Quezon in the days of his power and glory when he was putting into practice the charming and elegant motto of Disraeli: “Life must be a continued grand procession from man hood to tomb." Like the great English premier, Que zon also believed that “life is too short to be little.” He ruled in the grand manner, relishing to the full the glit tering appelation of “Excel lency,” which only colonial governors had worn before him, in the sumptuous palace of Malacanan. He loved his titles, loved them so much that he had legislation passed providing that municipal exe cutives cease to be called "Presidentes” like himself and content themselves there after with the modest title of ‘‘alcaldes.” Quezon loved power, and he knew how to keep it. But he kept it, like the realist that he was, in the only way in which it can be kept in a democracy, by winning the faith and love of the people. There ynust be some psycho logical similarity between love and politics, between women and multitudes, be cause Quezon was fortunate with both. He had the ins tinct for the right approach, for the cajoling phrase, for the charming attitud^. He knew when to wait, and when to dash in for his prize. He knew how to couch his desires in accents seemingly irreproachable and sincere. He knew when to command, and when to obey; when to resist, and when to yield; when to begin; and when to stop; when to give the win ning embrace and when to deliver the coup de grace. His present-day successors have his appetites without his potency, his ambitions without his wit, his love of power without his conscience, his human afflictions with out his magnificence. The same providence that gave us yesterday the Quezons and Osmenas and Sumulongs, has given us, to test our endur ance, the Neros and Caligulas of the present. APRIL 1966 57 Although he was a realist and an empiricist, Quezon was fortunately endowed with a democratic conscience. He did not hesitate .to use the full powers of the admi nistration against his politi cal opponents. He was la vish and calculating in his exercise of the rights of pa tronage and allocation of public works funds. But he never overstepped the bounds of these legitimate forms of political warfare. He was zealous in maintain ing the purity of electoral processes. This was the heart of democracy, and Quezon guarded it even against his own party and his own im mediate political interests. 1 have in mind one par ticularly dramatic election, when former Senator Alejo Mabanag, defeated the Nacionalista candidate, Alejan dro de Guzman, in the old second senatorial district composed of Pangasinan, La Union and Zambales. Ma banag, a Democrata, was du ly proclaimed and seated, but a protest was filed by De Guzman. At that time, if you will recall, there were no electoral tribunals, and protests were heard by a committee of the correspond ing chamber, which after wards made its report for the approval or disapproval of the whole body. In the Senate, as in the House of Representatives, the Nacionalista Consolidado Party was in the majority, and natural ly they also controlled a majority of the committee that heard De Guzman’s protest. The completely par tisan conclusion reached by that committee was that Ma banag had lost the election, and should be unseated, al legedly because of various irregularities, among them the misreading of ballots in his favor. Now, this was plainly impossible because De Guzman, as the majority candidate, had two of the three inspectors, and it was inconceivable ’ that the lone minority inspector of Maba nag had been able to mis read ballots on the gigantic scale necessary to give him a fraudulent victory. In fact; the contemplated report of the committee was such a flagrant piece of party injus tice that three Nacionalistas, Senators Briones, Vera and Generoso, crossed party lines to support Mabanag. 53 Panorama 1 was then the de facto minority floor leader in the Senate, and, knowing Que zon’s character, I took the matter up with him. I sup pose that any other party missed me, but Quezon prov ed to be, as I knew he would be, an honorable exception to the rule. He listened at tentively to my argument, but inclined to feel that he could do nothing to inter fere with the judgment of the committee. Finally, knowing that he had an im plicit faith in the judicial mind, I suggested that an umpire be appointed among the judicial-}', to go over the evidence and, in a purely personal and unofficial ca pacity, determine which of the two candidates, the ma jority or the minority man, had( really won. With char acteristic rapidity of decision, Quezon accepted my propo sition, and then added, with a smile, that he nominated my brother, Judge Alfonso Recto of Laguna, for the job of umpire. Naturally, I pro tested that any decision reached by my brother would be suspect to the majority party, but Quezon insisted, reminding me that my bro ther Alfonso was a Nacionalista, and 1 had to yield. 1 do not think it was because he was my brother, but ra ther because the evidence was inescapable, that Judge Rec to ruled in favor of Maba nag. Immediately, just as I had expected, the majority party members protested that the decision was partial and prejudiced, and Quezon agreed to appoint Another unofficial arbitrator. This time another Nacionalista judge was chosen. Judge Car los Imperial, later to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he, in turn, decided in favor of De Guzman. It was my turn to protest, and, knowing the pro found respect in which Que zon held the then Chief Jus tice Ramon Avancena, I sug gested that we secure a final decision from him, again of course, in a purely personal and unofficial manner. What followed was certain ly a test of Quezon’s impar tiality and statesmanship. Avancena, taking strong ex ception to being dragged into that sort of partisan struggle, had to yield to Quezon’s April 1966 59 earnest appeal, and consented to take the case under advisement. First he gave his way after so many delays and opinion in favor of Mabanag. complications, and to unseat Then the majority Senators th Dps it ion candidate. A headed by Benigno Aquino *|TeSsaF^TCader than Quezon somehow were able to con- would have found it easier vince him that he had been wrong, and he changed his decision to rule in favor of De Guzihan. We were taken aback by this change of heart, but Briones, Vera, and Generoso, all, it should be remem bered, Nacionalistas, assisted me in persuading Avancena to change his decision all over again in favor of the Democrata candidate. We were successsful, and I asked the Chief Justice to , write Que zon a short note, which he did, saying that Mabanag had really won, and that this time his opinion was final. It was a terrible blow to those intransigent Nacionalista Senators. What compli cated matters was that De Guzman was, by marriage, an ahijado of Mrs. Quezon, who had already presented him with a new suit for the special occasion of his oath taking. The Nacionalista Senators, excepting naturally those three who took Mabanag’s side, were on the verge of rebellion. They were de termined to have their own to go back on his word, and to listen to the dictates of party interest and conve nience. Instead, Quezon took it up as a challenge to his leadership. He asked for the papers of the case, and told his Nacionalista followers that, sick as he was, he would have himself carried to the Senate on a stretcher, and there he would make a speech and vote for Mabanag, stak ing upon the vote his own presidency in the Senate. It was one of those admirable gestures that made Quezon truly great, and it was one of his moments of true great ness. In the face of his in transigence, the members of his party retreated, the com mittee report was changed to conform with Justice Avancena’s final findings, and the Senate voted to maintain Mabanag in his seat. I have recounted this epi sode in our political history at some length because I think it is a model of that 60 Panorama devotion to the sacredness of the popular will, which we all need in these trying times. What was Senator Mabanag to President Quezon? Maba nag was a Democrata, a mem ber of the opposition, an an tagonist of President Quezon himself in the Senate. In fact, afterward, during the Pro-Anti controversy, this stubborn Democrata whom Quezon saved from being un seated, refused to take the side of the Antis, and went over to Osmena and the Pros. Yet, for the sake of this poli tical opponent, or rather for that of the people who had cast their votes for him/and whose will had to be respect ed, Quezon defied the mem bers of his own party, dis appointed his own wife, whose sympathies were natu rally with her ahijado, staked his jSenate Presidency, and refused to sanction any sub version of the popular man date. Of what a different breed are the successors of President Quezon in powerl Again to quote from Dis raeli, "when the eagles leave, the vultures return." Que zon’s present-day successors are not birds of the same no ble breed. Quezon’s, scorned frauds, as he would have not only scorned but punished terrorism in the most exem plary manner, because he firmly believed that without free and honest elections no republican form of govern ment could survive. And be sides, he knew his own strength. The eagle does not stoop to eat carrion. That is for vultures alone. But lesser politicians, conscious of their weakness, suffering from incurable . complexes, take on more ignoble parts, and must let cunning and treachery and mendacity make up for courage and sa gacity and truthfulness. They are content to feed on the sores and ulcers of the body politic, slowly pecking it to death in the grisly expecta tion of fattening on the cor ruption of the corpse. But if Quezon had no po litical philosophy, he surely had a political conscience and a personal decorum which have been stunted in his successors. The magnifi cent political era which he began in manly challenge, noble pride and great intel lectual power, is now coming to its end in malice, impos ture, lunacy and cowardice. April 1966 61 Quezon did not hesitate to allocate public works funds and distribute patronage for political purposes; his pre sent-day successors do not he sitate to spend even money that has been set aside for different purposes, and spend it on fictitious public works with brazen manipulations of vouchers and payrolls. He was not above ihtrigue; but his successors have developed intrigue into blackmail. And while Quezon held at bay frauds and attempts at ter rorism, they have not been deterred by the scruples that were his and have assaulted, with every illegitimate wea pon they can wield, the very citadel of democracy. It is time for this era to end. Or rather, it is for us now to end this era. A po litical philosophy may have been unnecessary, even a hin drance, in the long decades when we were a subject peo ple, free from ultimate res ponsibilities for the conduct of our government, and when rival leaders could play the game of power for its own sake. But now that we are an independent republic, en trusted alone with our own destinies, we must have lea ders with a consistent and fundamental view of huma nity and the world, a philo sophy which shall guide them unerringly and steadily through all the vicissitudes of the nation's existence. Quezon himself, if he were alive today, would have been the first to perceive the com ing of a new age, for, al though it was mercifully con cealed from him by t provi dence, z a terrible price for his political realism and op portunism was to be exacted by a mysterious destiny from those he loved best on earth. At the very summit of his career, as President of the Philippines, driven by a con suming desire to serve all the humble people who had stood by him in his long and arduous climb to power, dri ven also perhaps by the ins tinctive realization that power carries with it a commensu rate responsibility, Quezon embarked upon his famous campaign for social justice. But he conducted that campaign with his usual pragma tism, ever obsessed by the actual, the local, and the im mediate. He lambasted judges who, in his opinion, were not sufficiently sympa62 Panorama thetic with the lot of the workers; impulsively promot ed those who glibly parroted his program; and, in the po litical field, flattered and pampered new forces that he neither understood fully nor could hope to control. In Pampanga,, he openly dis played his sympathies for the fledgling socialist-communist group of Pedro Abad Santos, playing host to and breaking bread with him in Malacanan, and, in frequent visits to that province, honoring him with his company to the extent of ignoring the local authorities. Undoubtedly, to Quezon’s shrewd practical mind, the socialist-communist m o v ement never seemed to have a deeper significance than that of a visionary political faction, useful as a counter weight in partisan struggle, while, to his warm and gene rous heart, the same move ment appealed as a sincere demand for relief from feu dal injustices. His lack of political philosophy blinded him to the irreconcilable differences between the ideo logy of representative demo cracy and that of totalitarian communism, which cannot stop at the mere reform of the social structure, but is pushed relentlessly by its own inner logic to the seizure of complete power in order to subvert the entire social order, recognizing in the pur suit of this supreme objective neither human rights nor hu man liberties. I do not think that either Quezon, or after his death his widow, the beloved Doha Aurora, ever fully realized this. They felt that no Fili pino would ever do them harm, least of all the dispos sessed and the humble for whom they had shown such constant solicitude. But ruth less and fanatical descendants and disciples of the very men whom Quezon had flattered, pampered, and encouraged in Pampanga, waited one fateful day beside the lonely road to Baler, Quezon’s own town, and there, in pur suance of what appears to have been a cruel little plot to dramatize their cause, they butchered the. widow and the eldest daughter of the for mer friend and protector of their political forbears and mentors. The Bongabong massacre was the tragic epilogue to April 1966 63 the life history of a master politician, an epilogue which brought to a grievous and sanguinary close the Quezonian era of political prag matism. Quezon, the man who best of all could read the human heart, the match less interpreter of popular feelings, the superb strategist of political war, did not fore see that a new force, a mili tant political philosophy had arisen in the land, which would be met and defeated, nnf-jvirh fhp skillful rnmhinations and alliances of which He was so fond^and which is so thoroughly mas tered, but only with an equal ly vigorous, integrated, poli tical program inspired by a profound and all-pervasive political faith. Thus, in paying tribute to the political genius of Ma nuel L. Quezon, we should not forget that, with our emergence as an independent nation into a world of divid ed loyalties and mortally conflicting ideologies, w e have entered a new age and we must face it by casting off habits of personal enrich ment and vain-glory, factional convenience, and lust for power, by dedicating our selves wholly and without reserve to the supreme na tional interest that we may realize our ideals of freedom and happiness under the sus taining care of the God of Nations. — From Manila Chronicle, August 20, 1958. 64 Panorama
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