The man who dared call Quezon inept

Few Filipinos today have heard of Cavite lawyer Eliseo Ymzon as one of President Manuel Quezon’s bitterest critics. Perhaps not even the Ymzon-Rosales clansmen who will hold a reunion this weekend know that their ancestor scathed Quezon’s "corrosive Presidency" in a pre-War book that was banned from circulation. Mail censorship of The Missing Master Link of the People’s Bill of Rights relegated Ymzon to history’s underside. But reviewing a rare copy would reveal a strain of Filipino nationalism during the Commonwealth years — one that promoted not merely liberty from America but military strength as well.

Winds of war were beginning to blow on the Commonwealth in Oct. 1940 when Ymzon, then 53, published his compilation of articles. Japan had invaded Manchuria; Germany, France; and Italy, East Africa. "Missing master link" referred to lack of essential military buildup to shield a nation that was then slated for independence in 1946. Ymzon used as metaphor a main chain link, as in a bicycle, to emphasize the need to arm. Perhaps it was because he was born in 1887 when a man first bicycled around the world. For Ymzon, freedom would be for naught if unsupported by an army that could deter Japan’s further southward expansion after occupying China’s nearby provinces of Hainan and Formosa. Quezon’s preoccupation with matters other than defense from likely invasion provoked the diatribe. Ymzon felt that the Commonwealth President had wasted three decades of political leadership, as well as the talent of Filipinos whose basic rights were defenseless.

Quezon in 1940 was the most practiced government official. He had won as governor of Tayabas in 1905, sat as majority leader of the Philippine Assembly in 1907, served as resident commissioner to the United States in 1909, returned in 1916 to become senator, and been elected President of the Commonwealth in 1935. Ymzon, an avid follower of state affairs, conceded Quezon’s brilliance in the early years. The latter successfully had lobbied for the Jones Act of 1916 that formed Congress, and the Tydings-McDuffie Law of 1934 that created the Commonwealth with a promise of self-rule by 1946. Still the Presidency in Ymzon’s eyes did not befit Quezon. He observed him as alternately kowtowing to or antagonizing America. An example was giving away mining rights to Americans, but taking it back if a concessionaire happens to advocate Philippine freedom too fast too soon. There was Quezon’s phenomenal temper too. These tended to confuse Filipinos and reduce the roles of other leaders: Agoncillo, Kalaw, Recto, Unson, Roxas, Aquino, and Sumulong (under whose Popular Front he had run in vain for a Senate seat in 1935).

Ymzon’s sharpest criticisms were of Quezon’s timidity to arm in the face of worldwide Fascist assault. He wondered why the leader clung to a faction of the US leadership that deemed insular armed defense futile, when others loudly were batting for buildup. For Ymzon, such buildup was not merely to conscript youths to the infantry or to master in sea craft, but to assemble a formidable air force. His models were the German blitzkriegs in which airplanes first smashed defenses before sending in foot soldiers. The lesson in reverse was that control of the air would cripple an invader’s assault troops, if not make it think twice about attacking. Ymzon bewailed the training of only 50 Filipino pilots at the time, compared to Germany’s 30,000 aces plus 30,000 alternates. Quezon egotistically dreamed of a new city in his name in Diliman, Ymzon wrote, when the area should be used for airplane and bomb factories, airfields and training schools.

Air buildup would cost billions of pesos. Ymzon pointed to some fund sources for starters: P25 million a year from charity sweepstakes earnings, P50 million from oil excise taxes, another P50 million from fuel sales taxes, and P100 million from luxury taxes. He proposed a special tax on incomes in excess of P2,500 a year, plus daily four-hour civil service by all professionals for five years, as was done by Axis powers in preparing for war. In effect, Ymzon was using lessons from the Fascists to prepare to fight them.

Ymzon, though a native speaker of Caviteño Tagalog, was schooled in Spanish like most of his Ilustrado peers. One of his daughters thinks "The Missing Master Link" suffers from Ymzon’s wooden, self-taught English. But that is not the book’s biggest fault. Ymzon had thought wrongly that Japan would avoid direct confrontation with America in attacking Manila. He also miscalculated that Japan, because then lusting for Indochina, would invade the Philippines only after our independence in 1946. He fiercely pushed military buildup thinking there was still time for it. By Dec. 1941 Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and the puny airfields of Luzon. Three years later a diabetic Ymzon would bleed to death on a hospital bed, unable to procure antibiotics because of wartime shortage, after surgery for carbuncle. The leader he excoriated would pass away the same year from tuberculosis while in exile in America. The Philippines, then subjugated by Japan, could only defenselessly await Liberation.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]