With Donald Trump and his defense team battling election irregularities flooding news outlets and social media, I was reminded of similar events that happened albeit in a different time and place. It was in the Philippines in 1949. My granduncle Elpidio R. Quirino was a candidate for the Presidency. Prior to that election, he was the Vice President who was catapulted to the Presidency to serve the remaining term of Manuel Roxas who met an untimely death the year before. In the 1949 election, he won against the opposition party the Nacionalista, and a runaway Liberal Party his own party that rebelled against his leadership. Despite a split in the Liberal Party, he won and in Trump's language "by a lot". But his party was accused of stealing the election by widespread fraud. The opposing parties claimed that the military and private armies were used to coerce and intimidate the opposing parties, that is according to claims of various sources that have never shown any proof that the election was indeed fraudulent.
This was the 3rd Republic a government that was formed after having undergone American tutelage that began in 1898 after they have wrestled control of the islands from Spain and overwhelmed a hastily organized 1st Republic of Filipino natives. American colonial education transformed the Filipino literally as brown Americans who first learned the English language and then the arts and the sciences and the American value system. The Filipinos were trained and learned how to run the government through the American Commissions that governed the islands. Progressively Filipino bureaucrats held positions in the Commission. The more educated and more affluent being given higher positions in government. The public school system produced English-speaking professionals that later on joined the bureaucracy. The American effort furthered the education obtained by Filipinos from Spain who ruled the islands for more than three centuries.
So as the Filipinos acquired their colonial education and the manner by which western government bureaucracies ran they began asking for more representation and Americans gladly accommodated them, first in the Jones Law that created a Philippine Legislature and providing more autonomy to the islands and then the Tydings McDuffie Act that defined steps to a partially independent Philippines where a constitution was framed for a Commonwealth that became reality in 1935. With World War 2 breaking out, the democratization process was interrupted by a 2nd Republic subservient to the Japanese regime during the war period. The Japanese surrendered in 1945 with Americans coming back to the islands and in 1946 governance resumed with the recognition of a fully independent Philippine Republic with the same constitution framed for the 1935 Commonwealth in accordance with definitive guidelines provided in the Tydings McDuffie Act. Whether the claims of election irregularities were true or not remains to be proven. I can only opine that Laurel who was President of the 2nd Republic was perceived as a Japanese collaborator and Filipinos were still hurting from the Japanese occupation that's why he lost. There are no historical records that showed the opposing Nationalista party candidate, Laurel, and the Citizen Party Candidate, Avelino pursued their claims unlike Donald Trump now who kept pursuing his claim using legal means provided by the US Constitution. Watching this process unfold is truly enlightening to the workings of a democracy. The Philippines seem to be a democracy in name only whereas the US is a working democracy. Citizens are actively involved in the electoral processes and when things go wrong they do feel disenfranchised and will fight to have it corrected. Filipinos? They don't care.
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