User:John clydemacion

Historical Understanding of the "Exerpt" Manuel L Quezon

Among leaders of colonized peoples before the Great Pacific War[1], Quezon was the only man styled as a president, and receiving a nineteen-gun salute. As he looked forward to twenty-one guns, he gave thought to the future shape of the Philippine polity and its leadership. In 1940 three speeches laid out a rough ''Theory of a Partyless Democracy."" Quezon was at the height of his powers, and the Japanese threat, while felt, was still sixteen months away from becoming an invasion.

Quezon made the metaphorical point that a nation is like a family, in which the father and the children cannot be at cross purposes. Nobody challenged his figure of speech. Quezon did not sound to his audience like a wayward Confucian from Northeast Asia; he was in fact touching the heart of some prominent: values in the Philippines which were common to Greater Malaysia.'' But nearly everything else Quezon said that day was challenged: by students, professors, journalists, jurists, and the Civil Liberties Union. The latter organization raised fears of a "tyrant." Quezon, undaunted, reentered the fray with another speech, in which he clarified his principles and stressed his major aim of social justice. The second speech further reveals his attempt to clear theoretical ground so that the Philippines might catch up with the New Deal in the United State's, and with the reforms of Miguel Aleman in Mexico; and to ride past the high-handed hacendero mentality which he distilled? He was not of that class; he could get along with it; could seek and get its support in some matters; and could still see its self-indulgence and social hierarchism as dangerous to the Philippines. To the criticism that he wanted to do away with all "fiscalizers" (critics), Quezon said that nobody feared to speak out in the Philippines. The evidence was that so many had done so against him: "Your Constitution offers you all the checking you need, except the checking of the opposition." He wished to make the basic point that executive power was required to effect social justice. This, the opposition was trying to block. He would be content, however, to succeed in less: to "show the world that this totalitarian ruler is known enough in the government university . . . for everybody to feel that he can disagree with him, and neither lose his job nor go to jail, that is enough for me."

An earlier speech shows how deep Quezon's concerns actually went-to the deepest levels of a national character. "The Filipino of today is soft, easy-going. . . . He is uninclined to sustained strenuous effort. . . . Face-saving is the dominant note in the confused symphony of his existence. His sense of righteousness is often dulled by the desire of personal gain. His norm of conduct is generally prompted by expediency rather than by principle. . . .'"* Apologizing for the severity of what he was saying, he called upon memories of the heroes of the past, Bonifacio, both del Pilars, Mabini, Luna, and above all Rizal. Why wait for an emergency to awaken the flame of their spirit? To endow the Filipino with optimism and valor, refashion the culture and character is an urgent "task of national spiritual reconstruction." To insure its accomplishments, "we shall formulate and adopt a social code-a code of ethics and personal conduct-a written Bushido-that can be explained in the schools, preached from the pulpits, and taught in the streets and plazas. . . . We shall indoctrinate every man, woman, and child in its precepts. . . . "Every official of the government will cooperate, and ignorance of, or failure to live up to, the rules of conduct established, will be a bar to public office. There will be some superficial men, those who claim and believe that they know it all, who would brand this as the first step toward totalitarianism. Let them bark at the moon.