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Yet this very man, voicing hopes that are nigh unanimous throughout the Philippines, feels obliged to harass and oppose the President on many major issues. Why? It is part of a strange and complex yet somehow simple story, a story which begins with the fact that Magsaysay is the prophet and product of a genuine revolution. He personifies and has brought to vivid life the tired cliché that the little people of his country expect him to govern for them. As his critics and intellectual superiors are prone to say, there are many things that he does not know, perhaps including how to run a modern government. But this he does know: the people of his country are his strength.
Everybody Wishes Well. The first session of the Filipino Congress in Magsaysay's administration ended recently. On the surface, he seemed to come through the session very well: he got most of the legislation he asked for. The big challenges to his authority were overcome or postponed. But the reality was different.
Magsaysay got his legislation enacted only because he finally faced up to a conflict with the senior Nacionalista Party leaders, the very men who persuaded him to leave ex-President Quirino's Liberal Party last year and run for President as a Nacionalista. The core of the conflict, the question to be decided, is whether the old politicos or Magsaysay will govern the nation, and for whose benefit.
Other questions are involved. One is whether the Philippines is to remain a firm ally of the U.S. in Asia (as will be the case if Magsaysay wins the struggle) or becomes an uneasy neutralist dependency, tied to the U.S. by bonds it cannot escape yet led by men who in varying degree detest the bonds and distrust the U.S.
Another question is how well the Philippines is to be governed. Magsaysay has yet to demonstrate that if he wins the current political struggle, the Philippines will be well, or even strongly, governed.
Countless episodes have created—and to some extent justified—an impression that Magsaysay, for all his forthright talk, wavers in the clinches, vacillates, makes and countermands and remakes decisions.