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He sporadically seeks to solve his problems with bursts of direct action which often merely compound his troubles and confuse subordinates. Many of the President's friends share the concern recently expressed by a Manila editor: "Everybody still wishes Magsaysay well. It is about time he gave the people more than honesty, integrity and the common touch. The government must be uncommonly capable, efficient and effective, too." Most of the men now opposing Magsaysay got behind him originally in the sincere hope that he would bring about a better and a fairer balance of life in the islands. What, then, divides them and the President? It is partly Magsaysay's refusal (erratic and inconsistent, but nevertheless determining) to play the game of politics as they know it. Partly it is pride: for example, old and venerated Senator José Laurel, the man who did most to elect Magsaysay under Nacionalista banners, expects to be recognized and consulted as one of Magsaysay's principal advisers and fiercely resents Magsaysay's failure to do so openly and regularly. But mostly it is intolerable to these men who have been in politics for so long that this one man's power should be so much greater than theirs and their party's.
Relentless Enemy. Laurel's personal urge for power is subdued by age (63).
Not so Laurel's principal partner in leadership of the Nacionalista Party, his one-time enemy and current friend. Senator Claro Recto. In the five months since Magsaysay was inaugurated, Recto has firmly established himself as a brilliant, determined and relentless enemy of 1) Ramon Magsaysay and 2) U.S. policy and U.S. interests in Asia. Apart from politics and foreign affairs, he is Manila's most distinguished and probably its most successful corporation lawyer. Now 64. he is pudgy, softspoken, incisively gentle in conversation but savage in political combat or in a courtroom. Recto was born in southern Luzon in the province of Taya-bas (now Quezon). His father, though he could not write, was a man of some importance in his village. Recto himself, educated by the Jesuits, stood at the head of his classes at Santo Tomas law school, learned to speak and write perfect Castilian (then the mark of a cultured gentleman).
He spent the prewar years in the ranks of those who demanded immediate freedom from the U.S. at all costs, by World War II was one of the islands' "Big Five" political leaders. With Jose Laurel he was in the Japanese puppet regime during occupation, serving in a manner which Filipinos have come to regard as in the best interests of his countrymen. Recto, who insisted on being tried as a collaborator after the war to clear himself of all taint (he was acquitted), and Laurel both still resent bitterly General Douglas MacArthur's postwar treatment of them and what they regard as U.S. misjudgment of their wartime roles under the Japanese.