Word: magsaysayism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Across the sea of white shirts and sun-brown faces floated the name of 45-year-old Ramon Magsaysay (pronounced wag-sigh-sigh), the fast-rising, Huk-fighting phenomenon who resigned as Secretary of Defense and quit President Elpidio Quirino's Liberal Party six weeks ago to join the Nacionalistas and wage war on Liberal corruption. Young businessmen, industrialists and army officers, and Filipino housewives-most of them political amateurs with the same kind of contagious enthusiasm as the amateurs for Ike and Stevenson-pitched in with U.S.-style posters and buttons and such slogans as "I sigh...
Early in his two-hour speech, the delegates listened politely. But as he droned on, the pavilion became clamorous with catcalls, whistles and the rhythmic banging of pop bottles. "Lastly! Lastly!" shouted delegates-meaning that the Senator should make his last point and sit down. Finally, he did. Magsaysay followed him and was brief. "I am a man of action," said he. "Therefore, I am not a speechmaker." Magsaysay sat down to a fervent ovation...
...provoked his outburst was a private dinner party given by U.S. Ambassador Raymond A. Spruance in honor of a visiting fireman: Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who is touring the Far East. Of the ten Filipino guests, only one was a Liberal; the rest, Quirino charged, were Nacionalistas, among them Ramon Magsaysay, the Huk-killing Defense Secretary who resigned last month to run against Quirino in next fall's presidential election campaign (TIME, March 9). The President did not mention that two other staunch Liberals, one of them his acting Defense Secretary, Oscar Castelo, were invited to the party but failed...
Last week Magsaysay abruptly resigned. "I have reached a point where my continuing on the job would be futile," said Magsaysay. "It would be useless for me to continue . . . killing Huks as long as the Administration continues to foster conditions which offer fertile soil for Communism." To this, Quirino replied: "Magsaysay is getting too ambitious...
...that the die was cast, Magsaysay spoke plainly: "The government is full of crooks and grafters ... I resigned not as a millionaire but as a poor man." Although he still wore the label of the Liberal Party, his resignation made him a leading candidate to oppose Liberal Quirino on the ticket of the opposition Nacionalista Party. Leader Jose Laurel, a mortal political enemy of Elpidio Quirino, has already renounced his own ambitions for the nomination, if Magsaysay would run, and renewed his pledge last week: "I launched the candidacy of Ramon Magsaysay," said he, "and personally am committed to support...