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The army awakened, Magsaysay launched savage forays to root out the Huk activists. At the same time, he struck at the roots of their power—the discontent that made potential Huks of every Filipino farmer. "They are fighting the government because they want a house and land of their own. All right, they can stop fighting because I will give them a house and land," he cried. And he did, setting up settlements complete with houses and electric lights in unused lands. "I don't know where to put all the Huks that have surrendered," he said triumphantly, and the Huk rebellion was broken.
Honest Election. In the past, the army had dominated Philippine elections as the bullyboy of the politicians in power. In 1951 Magsaysay undertook to insure the Philippines' first free election. He jailed mayors or town officials for allowing phony registration, warned trigger-prone local bosses, once arrested a town's whole police force for murdering opposition voters. The results were incontrovertible proof of Magsaysay's honesty in Philippine eyes: his party was resoundingly defeated.
By 1953, Maysaysay was fed up with Quirino's Liberal government. He had been offered one too many bribes, had seen one too many corrupt colleagues, he said. But when the rival Nationalists approached him to lead a military coup d'état, he refused ("I might be a good dictator, but how do you know about the next one?" he asked them). Then they asked him to become their presidential candidate. His speech at the nominating convention was short. "I am a man of action. Therefore I am not a speechmaker," he said, and sat down. He was elected President by a landslide.
As President, Magsaysay was the U.S.'s sturdiest defender and stoutest friend in all Asia. When opponents taunted him as an "American puppet," he replied defiantly that he would run for election any time on the platform of friendship with the U.S. He had no patience with neutralism. "Between our way of life and Communism, there can be no peace, no paralyzing coexistence, no grey neutralism," he said. "There can only be conflict—total and without reconciliation."
Smiling Now. Even his well-wishers worried over Magsaysay's impatience with experts and technicians. When forced to listen to them, he cracked his knuckles nervously and rolled his head back and forth on his neck. "The professor's reports aren't as important as people," he said; what saved him from folly was his instinct for what the people wanted and needed. Whenever he could, he got out of the palace to go back to the barrios. Filipinos lined the roads along his route, and he extended his hand to brush their fingers as he passed. Bounding up steps two at a time, mopping the sweat from brow and neck with a towel, he shook hands in city halls and in the village squares, talked under mango trees among nipa huts, pledging a new pre-fabricated schoolhouse here, discussing a new road or a new irrigation dam there. Magsaysay himself seemed to draw strength from the contact. Looking out at the sea of people, Magsaysay said proudly: "People smile now. It's only six years since no one smiled and everybody was afraid of his neighbor."