A Country Runs Like Hell By Filipinos

By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA

My kids and the Missus are going gaga with the controversial flick of the Castillian looking Philippines President Manuel L. Quezon. They are watching his documentaries at YouTube before going to the celluloid screen at Robinsons.

Photo grabs from the internet.

Geez, I taught Quezon in my History class in college for ten years.

I blamed him for the present misery of the Filipinos because our thieving leaders are getting worst as the years pass by.

The emphatic rabble rousing Quezon - as Resident Commissioner of the Philippines Islands in the U S House of Representatives from 1909 to 1916-- lobbied ardently in the early 1900's at the four walls of the hallowed U.S august chamber for independence from the Yanks.

“I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans. I want to tell you that I have, in my life, made no other remark which went around the world but that. There had been no paper in the United States, including a village paper, which did not print that statement, and I also had seen it printed in many newspapers in Europe. I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by any foreigner. I said that once; I say it again, and I will always say it as long as I live. [Applause.]," excerpt of his speech on Civil Liberties Union at the Ateneo Auditorium, Manila on December 9, 1939.

Quezon zealously espouses this independence stuff in and out of the country because of his naked ambition to be President of the Philippines.

If our leaders then emulated Puerto Rico and Guam ( bought by the U S for $20 million from Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1898 that included the Philippines), our lives are better today than the hell given to us by the miscreant, knaves, and scoundrels at the DPWH, Customs, BIR, Malacanang, Congress, and what have you.

Imagine, from 1898 to 1946 we were part of America and our ascendants during those years of colonization enjoyed the economic bonanzas brought by its free trade. Goodies like sugar from the Philippines entered the gargantuan U.S market without a quota and a tariff because we were America then, sanamagan!

Our Asian neighbors during that time envied us economically.

If this forsaken country is part of the U.S as State or protectorate like Puerto Rico corruption is not this worse because the long arms of the American justice system could reach the bad guys wherever places they have hidden. You asked El Chapo of Mexico and that pineapple faced Panama President Antonio Noriega how effective the U.S law enforcement that made even hardcore world class narco exporter Pablo Escobar of Colombia shake in his shoes about the threat of extradition in the mainland U.S.A.

That's what we call deterrence!

Quezon played a crucial role in lobbying for the passage of the Jones Act in 1916, which paved the way for Philippine autonomy, and later helped secure the Tydings-McDuffie Independence Law in 1934.

And the scheming and ambitious Spanish born Pinoy from the rustic town of Baler, Tayabas Province (now Quezon) got his wishes: a presidential post where he rubbed elbows with his equivalent and former master U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a hell run by corrupt Filipino leaders today to their constituents who are getting poorer as the days pass by.