A Year After Magsaysay

Like its Washington counterpart, Manila's annual National Press Club Gridiron show is enlivened by roasting the politicians in the audience. But never before had Manila's jesting correspondents gone so far in impertinence. The curtain rose on a scratching, underwear-clad figure representing President Carlos Garcia during last year's election campaign. A Chinese constituent, loaded down with pesos, came onstage and said he was "velly happy that good fliend Garcia running for Plesident." Garcia orotundly protested that he never took bribes. The Chinese was just about to leave in confusion when, from backstage, a figure dressed up to resemble Mrs. Garcia beckoned him--and took away his money.

Diplomats in the audience squirmed uncomfortably. When the skit was over, the real President Garcia tried to pass it off as a joke that proved nothing more than that the Philippine Republic has a truly free press. A free press the nation does have, with a heightened capacity for invective, and the air is usually filled with political cries that everything and everyone is for sale. Only during the three-year presidency of the late, dedicated Ramon Magsaysay was there a notable absence of charges of corruption at Malacanan Palace. Only a little more than a year since President Magsaysay's death in a plane crash, under the stewardship of the undistinguished politician who was his Vice President, the Philippine Republic finds itself in the worst financial shape it has been in since 1949.

While the nation's dollar reserves have plunged from $225 million to around $150 million, its trade deficit has soared to $186 million; its national debt is up to $800 million, and one-fourth of the labor force is out of work or underemployed. Garcia himself insists placidly, lighting a Chesterfield with a gold lighter, that "things are about back to normal."

Economists give many reasons for the financial crisis--that the peso is ludicrously overvalued, the government has strained the economy by industrializing too fast, etc. But among other explanations, one pops up with dismaying consistency. Says one Nacionalista member of a Senate committee investigating corruption : "After what this committee has learned, I can safely say that we have in the Philippines today the dirtiest government in the world."

Chits for Cash. While Magsaysay scrupulously refused to accept campaign contributions himself, Garcia let it be known that he would accept contributions personally--or they might be given to his wife, whose financial acumen and taste in jewelry are much admired in Manila. For a long while, permission to withdraw dollar reserves from the Central Bank was granted only when accompanied by chits initialed by Garcia. During his six-month campaign, the bank's dollar reserves dropped $90 million as a result of heavy but legal withdrawals.

Six weeks after President Magsaysay's death, the new Garcia administration gave an organization called the Philippine Coconut Producers' Federation permission to barter copra for foreign goods. The federation, Senate investigators later learned, was merely a front for a naturalized Chinese operator who exported only a fraction of the copra he was supposed to, but managed to reap a tidy $600,000 profit by selling to Manila merchants his dollar import allocation.

The Garcia administration also took a lively interest in distributing the $550 million worth of war reparations due from Japan. While delaying nomination of the three-man commission that was supposed by law to handle the reparations, the administration distributed millions itself, and Garcia's secretary refused to turn over his records to Congress.

Shadow Cabinet. Sitting in an outer wing of the presidential palace watching these goings-on is young Vice President, Diosdado Macapagal, a Magsaysay follower who, running on the Liberal ticket, got more votes for Veep than did Nacionalista Garcia for President. Since Macapagal refused to change his party after the election, Garcia barred him from any Cabinet post. Completely isolated ("I only learn what's going on from reading the newspapers"), Macapagal has been subjected to every kind of palace snub. If his air conditioner breaks down, maintenance men take weeks to fix it. When official limousines were handed out, he got a rattletrap that Garcia himself had long ago discarded.

But Macapagal has gathered round him a shadow cabinet of advisers, and set up his own intelligence service in the government. Last week, as President Garcia blithely mapped his strategy for getting another $300 million from the U.S. during his forthcoming visit to Washington this spring, Macapagal's sleuths began seeking evidence of corruption.

"When we get the necessary evidence assembled." says Macapagal, "we plan to bring criminal charges against this man. And then we will impeach him."

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