Only one issue was at stake when some 2,000,000 button-eyed Filipinos went to the polls last week to elect a President: By how big a majority would they return frail, dapper little Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina to office?
Ailing Manuel Quezon (he has tuberculosis), President since 1935, did most of his campaigning from bed. He showed himself in his sleek car, behind a motorcycle escort, only when alarmists shouted that he was dying. In his Malacanan Palace, changing from one bright-colored dressing gown to another, the 63-year-old President played bridge, ran off movies for his friends, with his thin fingers deftly manipulated the wires that control Philippine politics.
His election was assured. But Manuel Quezon wanted it made unanimous. Only three parties were allowed on the ballot: Quezon's Nationalist Party; the Popular Front Party of sick, old Juan Sumulong; and the small radical Ganap Party, whose pro-Japanese founder is in jail. Running with Quezon was his Vice President, tall, slant-eyed Sergio Osmeña, whose popularity in the Philippines is equal to the President's. Every one of the 122 Nacionalista candidates for the Senate and the Assembly was hand-picked by Quezon, who shuffled them as a bridge player shuffles cards while the campaign went on.
When some of his candidates turned against him, started campaigning as independents, Manuel Quezon took to his easy chair, picked up the telephone beside it, dialed a number. In a few minutes he had the situation in hand. Five rebel candidates were made air-raid wardens in Manila, with bigger salaries than they would have got if elected. The rest became Acting Governors.
Filipinos love such political jugglery. Though the election was a foregone conclusion, several minority candidates campaigned just for the fun of it. The best show was put on by gaudy, athletic Hilario Camino Moncado. Colorful Candidate Moncado, Philippine equivalent of Texas' Pappy O'Daniel, is married to pretty Diana Toy, onetime Hollywood bit player who is now Manila's favorite radio singer. He took his wife with him to rallies, looked on with a smile as she led his fervent followers in The Moncado March.
Moncado startled Filipinos by advocating "dominion status for the Philippines under the United States." Quezon and Osmeña stuck to their Nationalist platform, which calls for outright independence for the Philippines in 1946. But Manuel Quezon, whose passion for secession has been minified lately under the shadow of Japanese aggression, admitted to his people that independence now is in the hands of no one man or country, but in the lap of the gods.
This year, for the first time, the docile Filipinos cast their ballots under the "block-voting" system, for which Manuel Quezon got his idea from Adolf Hitler's Germany. They could vote a straight party ticket by simply writing in the name of the party. To split the ticket, they had to write down the full names of 27 candidates in a stuffy election booth—while Quezon's watchful ward leaders thoughtfully eyed their clocks.