Quezon’s ghost - WHY AND WHY NOT By NELSON A. NAVARRO

President Manuel Luis Quezon once grandly said that the six-year term originally granted by the 1935 Constitution was "too long for a bad president and too short for a good president." It was obvious which president he fancied himself to be. Everyone of his successors has, of course, passionately embraced this seductive, if self-serving, political line.

The simple reason Quezon tampered with that erring constitutional provision in 1940 was that he wanted to remain in power, indefinitely if at all possible. The amendment he got from a most obedient legislature offered one four-year term with one re-election. Under the new formula, he would have lasted all the way to 1943, instead of 1941, then installed a trusted ally for a few years and on to the elaborate pretense of being in "retirement." Thereafter, he would be eligible for a fresh eight-year cycle that could have kept him in power as late as 1955.

It was a clever design for power longevity that predated Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s still-omnipotent "senior minister" by some 25 years or a full generation. And Quezon’s dream, mind you, had all the markings of a Latin-style disguised dictatorship blessed by a distant US government that was otherwise dedicated to turning its one and only colony into "the show window of democracy in the Far East."

Quezon’s grand scheme, as we all know, fell by the wayside. In December 1941, just after his election for a second term, the Japanese invaded the Philippines and he was forced into exile, never to return alive. More than that, the great leader was wracked by tuberculosis, in those days a fatal disease. He had to face the brutal fact that his raging ambitions would have to give way to a wasted and terminally ill body. And it did in 1944.

Still, the Man from Baler, had he lived and been gifted by good health would have been only 77 in 1955, and not exactly too old to wield power. Look at Fidel Ramos, now 72, who’ll be 75 should he run for and regain the presidency in 2004. Indeed, the 77-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, arguably as strong as an ox, continues to dominate Singaporean affairs and pass himself as the Sage of Southeast Asia – the living guarantee that the tiny but wealthy nation’s leadership will eventually pass to his favored son.

Designed as a stark accommodation to Quezon’s megalomania, the one-term with only one re-election rule bedeviled every Filipino president after him. That is, until Ferdinand Marcos broke the no-re-election jinx in 1969 and proceeded to impose an open-ended dictatorship, that in reality, had prevailed under Quezon but with total acquiescence of the Filipino elite.

Marcos’ fault was that he was a Johnny-come-lately to power. The Manila-based elite Quezon allowed to get rich and which he always had eating out of the palm of his hands had become understandably jealous and protective of their vested interests. They were not about to jump to Marcos’ wishes in the manner they had so cravenly displayed before El Mestizo.

Such elite pride prevailed until Marcos changed the rules in 1972 and turned himself into the New Quezon. But before that, all the other presidents from Sergio Osmeña and Diosdado Macapagal bitterly realized that they had an increasingly assertive and avaricious elite to cater to. Nothing else made this message clearer than the grovelling they had to do to get to Malacañang. The splendid misery would never end because they would have to seek reelection if they had no wish to be regarded as "one-term wonders" or mere caretakers to be tolerated for four years and then accordingly discarded.

Needless to point out, all the sitting presidents before Marcos were humiliatingly voted out of office (Osmeña, Quirino, Garcia, Macapagal) or they left in a box, feet first (Roxas, Magsaysay).

The implicit message was that there could never be another Quezon, the Founding Father who was present at the Creation, wrote the rules of the Establishment and thus reigned and ruled as the Filipino king.

Perhaps to emphasize this point, the 1987 Constitution passed after the fall of the Marcos regime mandated that there would never be another strong presidency, much less a dictatorship. The purported instrument would be the original six-year with no reelection dumped by Quezon.

What, pray tell, has this tinkering with presidential terms achieved?

The law of unintended consequences, sad to say, has recreated a truly imperial presidency in Quezon’s image. This is so because today’s multiparty system effectively turns Congress and the rest of the government into satrapies of Malacañang. All three presidents – Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada – seem to agree with Quezon that six years is "too short" for the good leaders they fancy themselves to be. They have accordingly gone through convolutions to invoke the magic Quezon had cast upon the people in another time.

Cory’s legal geniuses kept saying the one-term limit did not apply to her because she was never elected, but rather "assumed" power. Ramos had his ill-starred "People’s Initiative." Estrada wasted no time hatching his own "constitutional correction" scheme, which was mercifully laughed off the stage. By all counts. Quezon’s ghost lives on.

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Nelson A. Navarro’s e-mail address: [email protected]