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Died. Arsenic H. Lacson, 49, maverick mayor of Manila (pop. 1,200,000) since 1951, a fiery reformer who became during three popularly elected terms what Philippine President Macapagal recently called a "national sentinel of public morality"; of a stroke; in Manila. Peppery Mayor Lacson-a former boxer, guerrilla fighter, lawyer, political-science professor, Congressman and newspaper columnist-cleaned up his tatterdemalion metropolis and became an acerbic presidential critic who crushed his Nacionalista Party mate, ex-President Carlos Garcia, and then started sniping at Liberal President Macapagal, whom he helped to power...
Waving to the crowd, shaking hands, kissing his friends, ebullient Arsenic Lacson, 47, marched bouncily into city hall last week to take the oath of office as mayor of Manila (pop. 2,000,000). He was the first Manila mayor ever elected to a third term. As usual, dark glasses were perched on his broken nose, but, instead of his customary open shirt, Lacson was soberly clad in a blue suit and maroon tie. In a 35-minute speech he promised Manila land-reclamation projects, bigger parks, new farmers' markets and bus terminals. Typically, he could not resist taking...
Edited Disk. Tough, trenchant and tenacious, Arsenio Lacson reminds many Americans of Manhattan's rambunctious Fiorello La Guardia, who also served three terms. Like La Guardia, Lacson cleaned up a corrupt administration and a wide-open city; he fired 600 incompetent job holders. Night after night, Lacson patrols Manila in a black police car, returns from time to time to a corner table at the Bay View or Filipinas hotels, where he listens to complaints and requests, or talks profusely on a plugged-in telephone, punctuating his conversations with shots of whisky and four-letter expletives. Sunday nights, Lacson...
Born on the island of Negros of part-Chinese ancestry (his last name is a cor ruption of the Fukien dialect and means "sixth son"), Lacson has been an amateur boxer, soccer player, anti-Japanese guerrilla, lawyer, professor and newspaper columnist. During the war he fought in the battles for Manila and Baguio, and was cited by the U.S. Sixth Army "for gallantry under fire." When Japan's touring Premier Nobusuke Kishi asked him if he had learned Japanese during the war, Lacson snapped, "I was too busy shooting at Japanese to learn any." Of Americans, he says: "They...
Enemy Scavengers. Currently, Lacson rails against "the abuses, excesses, rascality, rapacity and filth of the Garcia administration." Lacson describes politics as "a way to see the world through a garbage can," and he has made enemies among those who scavenge there. Driving home one night, Lacson was nearly killed by a burst of carbine fire. He has twice disarmed gunmen who attacked him and is fatalistically prepared to end either as President of the Philippines or victim of an assassin. "My father was murdered," says Lacson, "and my grandfather was killed by slipping on a cake of soap...