Deja Vu All Over Again

Time on the Philippines, June 05, 1950:

Last November's presidential election also left an unsavory taste in the Philippines. Most Filipinos think that victorious President Elpidio Quirino, anxious to forestall any congressional investigation into the election results, made a deal with Jose Avelino, who had been suspended as president of the Philippine Senate for trafficking in government-owned beer. Avelino still controlled enough votes in Congress to get Quirino's election certified as legal. And there is no doubt about the fact that Quirino later helped Avelino to get back his Senate presidency, then sent him flying off on an expensive world tour as a good-will ambassador.

These and other rumors of corruption in government circles have hurt Quirino's prestige. Last week, shortly after Manila's tabloid Star Reporter referred to him as "our beloved President . . . who is growing fat like a pig on public taxes," Quirino showed concern for public opinion and appointed his vigorously critical Vice President, Fernando Lopez, to investigate corruption in the government.

Old Vendettas. But Quirino bears little responsibility for at least one element in the Philippines' economic and political deterioration. His faults do not include the narrow nationalism which is the strongest legislative trend in the Philippine Congress. Economic nationalism has frightened off prospective American investors, and inspired in some American businessmen already in the Philippines a strong desire to head for home.

Most prominent of the extreme nationalists is Jose Laurel, Quirino's chief opponent in the last election and head of the Nationalist Party. Laurel had Huk support during the election. If he chose, popular Jose Laurel could be useful in an anti-Communist front against the Huks, but he refuses to cooperate unless Quirino's Liberal Party publicly admits that it cannot handle the job alone and publicly asks the help of the Nationalists.

This makes bargaining hard for Quirino, but he may yet discover that he cannot do without Laurel's aid. The fall of China has encouraged the Huks. Should China's Communists take Formosa, only 65 miles from the Philippines' northern tip, Filipino Communists would become an even more serious threat to the government.

So far, China's fall has not yet hurt the Philippines as much as internal dissension has. Today the strength of the government's forces in the Philippines is still greater than that of the Communists. But its strength is ebbing away in disunity, as businessmen and politicians fight out their old vendettas and pursue their schemes to advance their personal ambitions. The Philippines can be lost, as China was.