By Marvin A. Tort / Sway
TOMORROW, the nation marks the 55th death anniversary of the late President Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay. Perhaps this is fortuitous in the sense that it allows the country now, amid all the political turmoil, to once more recall the life and times of a political leader who was deemed unstained until his death.
It was tragic for people who loved him that his life was cut short on March 17, 1957, as the presidential plane “Mt. Pinatubo” crashed in Mount Manunggal, Cebu. He was just turning 50 the coming August, and was still to complete his four-year term as President after having been elected overwhelmingly in the November 1953 elections.
One can only speculate on the country’s fate had he lived through his entire presidency and beyond. As a person and as a leader, for sure he had his faults. But following his mold as a public servant, succeeding leaders could have been more particular about honesty, integrity and delicadeza or sense of propriety.
There are many stories about how Magsaysay conducted himself as a public official, including how he had instructed the Malacañang kitchen staff to religiously tally all the food expenses incurred by his three children—who were all in school then—and their friends who would occasionally visit the Palace.
Magsaysay had considered such family expenses as “personal” and had them deducted instead from his monthly paychecks, rather than charged against regular Palace expenses. This went on, according to one of his children, without the family’s knowledge, and they were made aware of it only after RM’s death.
Ramon “Jun” Magsaysay Jr., former representative and senator, said his father, as President, received a monthly salary of P5,000. But RM’s last paycheck, for March in 1957, received by his wife, Luz Banzon Magsaysay, was for only P2,000 after deductions.
Jun Magsaysay also said that even his father’s gasoline expenses, for the personally owned, secondhand Ford car he was using at the time, were charged against his paycheck. Even his sister Mila’s debut party expenses were deemed by RM as personal and thus charged against his salary, Jun said, since his father “scrupulously” delineated personal or private from public expense.
After RM’s death, his wife and children could not even move back into their 24-year-old house in Singalong, Manila. Built in 1933 by RM while he was still a young manager at Try-Tran transport, the house was rented out at the time, and the Magsaysays did not want to displace the tenant.
But with the family’s sole breadwinner lost to the tragic crash, the Magsaysays ended up borrowing someone else’s house for about a year while they put up a new home on a lot donated by the Ortigases in Mandaluyong.
The construction of the house was financed by the proceeds of RM’s personal accident insurance, a coverage that was unknown to the family until after his death, while architectural services and some construction materials were donated by the late President’s friends and admirers. The President’s widow lived a simple life in the same house for almost 50 years, until her death in 2004.
And it was largely through scholarships as well as a modest pension from the government that Luz Magsaysay eventually managed to see her two daughters and her son through their studies in good universities.
For younger generations whose knowledge of RM come only from history books and accounts of elders, one cannot help but admire “the Guy” for his brand of clean politics. Indeed, as a public servant he left a deep and positive mark in Philippine history—one that cannot be easily eclipsed by any shortcoming, if any.
His honesty and sincere desire to give more particularly to the common man has made RM a Philippine political legend. Sadly, only few from his generation remain to share their experiences under his presidency. Some may have even forgotten, and many of the younger set simply don’t know enough about how he was as a guerrilla and political leader, and later as the government’s steward.
In a book published by the University of California Press in 1961, just four years after RM’s tragic death, academic Frances Lucille Starner wrote: “Magsaysay was undoubtedly a man of great personal integrity, and had an unswerving devotion to duty. In addition, an intensely appealing personality and qualities of popular leadership qualified him peculiarly for the role he was to play among the peasantry.”
Starner, who researched and studied Magsaysay’s relationship with the peasantry and the impact of his agrarian- reform program on Philippine politics, added, “In the political situation of 1953, Magsaysay’s reputation for honesty and fairness unquestionably weighed heavily with the voters, and particularly with those in the rural areas... It was fortuitous that Magsaysay combined traits of personal virtue and with those of popular leadership. Certainly, personal integrity has not been a distinctive characteristic of many of the popular leaders of the 20th century.”
The Philippines has yet to see or experience another Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay. His political successor, his son and namesake, had opted to “retire” from politics after having served at the House of Representatives in 1965-1969, and then at the Senate in 1995-2007.
But true to his father’s political legacy, Jun Magsaysay, now a gentleman-farmer, had endeavored to keep his political life unblemished by any allegation of corruption or even impropriety. One wishes that present and future leaders could also live by RM’s strict personal standard and values, and sense of right and propriety, before, during and after public office.
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