The People's Choice

On the beach of Leyte just south of Tacloban, U.S. landing barges rust in the surf. A monument near by proclaims proudly that here in 1944, General Douglas MacArthur and the Americans landed to restore the Four Freedoms to the Philippine Islands.

In Tacloban, and in all the cities, provinces and villages of the Philippines last week, the words on the monument were put to their severest test. In an atmosphere heavy with threats, of intimidation and violence, even with talk of possible civil war, Filipinos turned out to elect a President and Vice President, a full House of Representatives and one-third of a Senate. The world looked on, wondering if U.S.-style democracy had really taken root.

It was a contest between the popular will, which surged up behind the young (46). Huk-tighting national hero, Ramon Magsaysay, and the corruption-pocked regime of ailing President Elpidio Quirino. Quirino men who came to power in a corrupt election four years ago had orders to win at all costs. The country seethed with reports--some true, some floated by the opposition--of administration money to juggle poll-watching police and army officers, to stuff ballot boxes, to buy Quirino votes and to intimidate Magsaysay voters.

Voters in one barrio went to the polls with envelopes containing carbon paper, so they could make copies of their ballots to prove they had voted for Quirino's Liberal, ticket, as required by the men who bought their votes. In Pasay a city near Manila, armed toughs marched into several polling places and made off with the ballot boxes. In Precinct 99 of Manila, a masked man deposed the election commissioner and announced that he would count the votes. His tally: Quirino. 149; Magsaysay. 1. There was some violence, ten deaths (six of them in gang-ridden Cavite, southwest of Manila, where pro-Magsaysay policemen shot up a small band of gun-toting Quirino supporters).

But both the violence and the cheating were small scale: the democratic process, triumphed. Some 4,200,000 Filipinos went to the polls to mark ballots with pencil and thumbprint. In the cleanest, calmest election in their six years of self-government, they elected vigorous, colorful Ramon Magsaysay, the Philippines' first authentic "man of the people." by a 2-to-1 landslide (2,890,401 to 1,292,395), gave Magsaysay's Nationalist-Democratic coalition a whopping majority in the House (67 to 31, with 4 still in doubt) and a solid one in the Senate.

Beaten and sick as he was. Elpidio Quirino (63) took the results with pride in his new nation: "This stands as incontrovertible proof that democracy is secure in our country."

The People Like Americans. In many ways, the Magsaysay victory was a U.S. victory. In 1950 when the menace of the Communist-led Huks threatened Manila itself, U.S. diplomats persuaded President Quirino to hand the Huk-fighting job to Ramon Magsaysay (pronounced mog-sigh-sigh), then the Liberal Party Representative from Zambales (TIME, Nov. 26, 1951 et seq.). A carpenter's son who got his engineering degree at the University of the Philippines, for a time worked in a U.S. Army motor pool, and then led a jungle army of 10,000 guerrillas against the Japanese, Magsaysay soon had the Huks on the run.

Magsaysay grew in the job; so did his abhorrence at the corruption bred by the Quirino regime: so did his ambition. Filipinos began talking of Magsaysay as presidential material, and Magsaysay liked the sound of it. It was soon no secret that Ramon Magsaysay was America's boy. For a time, U.S. Colonel Edward Lansdale of the U.S. Air Force took a desk in Magsaysay's Defense Office, became virtually his mentor and publicity man. Polished, precise William Lacey. Councillor of the U.S. Embassy, became the man to whom Magsaysay turned daily for counsel.

Lacey and other U.S. officials were worried by Magsaysay's open and unabashed exploitation of the friendship, but not Magsaysay. ''What do you know about Filipinos?'' he would say. "I tell you, my people like Americans, and they like to see me with Americans." In spite of a Filipino law which forbids foreigners to contribute to election campaigns. U.S. business interests in the islands anted up some $250.000 at a time when Magsaysay's Nationalist Party was seriously short of funds. On election day. 25 U.S. officers were sprinkled around polling areas by Major General Robert M. Cannon to ''observe" units of the Filipino army on election day. and a platoon of U.S. foreign correspondents, dispersed through the islands, helped protect Filipinos against monkey business at the polls.

Filipinos had a chance to vote their minds without fear of revenge or having their votes disqualified. The Filipinos made up their own minds. No man since the great Filipino patriot. Jose Rizal, has so captured the Filipino fancy and fired the Filipino imagination as the rugged (5 ft. 11 in., 170 Ibs.) man from Zambales. He displays emotions and utters words which might seem corny and insincere in more sophisticated men. In more than 1.500 villages and cities, he laughed, ate, mingled with and talked to the voters. "I love to shake the hands--the dirty hands --with the mud of the poor farmer. I love to shake the greasy hands of the mechanic. Although they are poor, I love to shake those hands rather than the hands of the Quirino politicians, who wash their hands ten times a day--perfumed hands washed with the best kind of soap."

Not of the Gentry. Magsaysay is the first man to reach the top in the Philippines who is not of the gentry. A blunt, impetuous man who often acts before he thinks, Magsaysay has by no means yet mastered the coral-sharp reefs of Filipino politics, nor is he the parliamentary equal of many of the barracudas who swim in both Filipino parties.

Landlords and powerful business interests have a say in the Nationalist Party's affairs. Its leaders, old Senators Jose Laurel and Claro Recto, are stringently conservative men who will seek to harness some of President Magsaysay's primitive radicalism. Many with whom the new President must work are, for example, bound to resent it if Magsaysay pushes fervently a program of land reform.

But with his boundless vigor and good health, his steel nerve, brash confidence and the support of the vast majority of his people, Ramon Magsaysay was one man who was not afflicted with doubts or fears. "The people," he vowed, "will have their own way."

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