By Zaldy Dandan
Variety Editor

A RECENT letter to the editor we published cited one of the two famous quotations from the president of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Philippines, Manuel L. Quezon (1878-1944): “I prefer a country run like hell by Filipinos to a country run like heaven by Americans.” His other famous quote: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”
He made both statements in 1922-1923 as he grabbed the leadership of the dominant political party, the Partido Nacionalista, from his rival Sergio Osmeña while crushing the opposition Partido Democrata. Back then, the Nacionalistas were to Philippine politics what the Democrats were in America’s pre-LBJ Deep South.
One of Quezon’s political enemies turned trusted ally, the great Sen. Claro M. Recto, would later remark that any political party should be loyal to the country to begin with. But then again, Quezon, like the great politico that he was, knew the value of what we now call “sound bites,” and he used them frequently and with much success. When the Philippine Commonwealth was inaugurated in Nov. 1935, the P.I. was a virtual one-party state, which is another story.
Quezon made his heaven and hell statement during the special election of 1923 for the fourth senatorial district then comprising Manila and the nearby provinces. Prior to the establishment of the commonwealth government, the Philippine chief executive was an American governor-general appointed by the U.S. president, but the bicameral Legislature was all-Filipino elected by Filipino voters. The chief justice of the local Supreme Court was Filipino, but the Americans held five of the nine seats. The governor-general’s cabinet was also composed of Filipinos, except for the secretary of public instruction, who was always an American.
In 1923, Quezon was Senate president and, therefore, the highest ranking Filipino in the insular government. From 1913 to 1921, he and his Nacionalistas enjoyed close relations with Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison, a Democrat appointed by the Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Harrison pampered Quezon and his party with government jobs and other political favors. But following the election of a Republican president in 1920, the affable Harrison was replaced by the dour Leonard Wood, a physician who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during the last campaign against Geronimo in Arizona and who later served as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, military governor of Cuba and of the Philippine Muslim south. In 1920, Wood sought the GOP presidential nomination. He won the New Hampshire primary but lost at the convention which chose the man who would later name him Philippine governor-general, the hapless Warren G. Harding.
As governor-general, Wood reversed the “Filipinization” policies of Harrison, which infuriated Quezon who certainly did not relish his suddenly diminished influence in the insular government. Worse, the opposition Democratas were gaining strength and in the 1923 special election had nominated the formidable Judge Juan Sumulong, Cory Aquino’s grandfather, as its senatorial candidate. With his leadership in the Senate at stake — the Osmeña faction was already anticipating Don Sergio’s recapturing the no. 1 spot — Quezon needed an issue to regain the political initiative. It came in July 1923 when Interior Secretary and future President Jose P. Laurel resigned to protest Wood’s interference in his department’s affairs. The stupid Democratas, believing that their time in the saddle had finally arrived, pledged cooperation with Wood. Quezon went on the offensive. He branded the Democratas as Americanistas, and announced that a vote for Sumulong was a vote against Philippine independence.
Recto, who was a Democrata then, later admitted that the election “was disastrous and catastrophic for us. The issue of anti-Americanism was so popular that it made the electorate overlook the 10 years of corrupt administration the so-called anti-American [Nacionalistas] had been giving the people, and which had all but ruined the country.” Seventy percent of the electorate voted for Quezon’s candidate, a greenhorn politician, former Manila Mayor Ramon J. Fernandez. And it was during the campaign when Quezon said, “I prefer a country run like hell by Filipinos to a country run like heaven by Americans.” Which is a clever rephrasing of one of the memorable lines given by Milton to Satan in “Paradise Lost”: “Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,/ To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:/ Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
That’s right. Those were the days when politicians still read the classics.
In any case, what is always left out by those who like to cite this Quezon quote is this part: “Because, however bad a Filipino government might be, we can always change it.” In other words, Quezon never really said that he would rather have a Filipino government run like hell. What he actually meant was that he believed that Filipinos would never condone such a government. (He sure got that right, didn’t he.)
Government, at any rate, is only as good as the people it governs. And this is something CNMI voters in this election year might want to ponder while they survey the ruins of local governance.

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