Keeping the myth

After my talk in Jersey City last October 17, I was asked about Jose P. Laurel whose photo was displayed in the exhibit there in the city’s library. The exhibit showed the different presidents of the Philippines from the time of Emilio Aguinaldo to the incumbent Benigno Aquino III.

I told the guests gathered together by the Philippine American Historical Society that the presidency of Jose Laurel is a myth that is being perpetuated because nobody questions it, and in fact as the exhibit showed and posters in our schools also displayed, Laurel is one of the presidents of the Philippines.

Laurel cannot and should not be considered among the presidents of the Philippines because the circumstances of his being “elected” are questionable and constitutionally if not morally objectionable.

His presidency is a myth because the alleged “facts” of that presidency simply go against the truth.

An answer to a simple question should give us pause. If Laurel was president, what does that make of President Manuel Quezon in exile in the US? Was Quezon deposed or was he the President of the Philippines? We cannot have two presidents at the same time. One must be the constitutional one and the other a pretender or a fake or faked.

Laurel was elected by a group of people orchestrated by Benigno Aquino Sr. who headed the political arm of the Japanese occupation forces. The constitution under which he was elected was also illegal because we had the 1935 constitution that provided for the election of the president and this was not followed – there was no legally constituted government and no constitution that the Filipino people ratified. The so-called constitution was drafted and ratified by puppets of the Japanese, Filipinos who collaborated with the occupation forces and were not duly elected.

There was a sham election by and among the elites of this country who collaborated with the Japanese. They were not elected at large as the Philippine constitution provided.

As the lawyers would wont to quote, water cannot rise above its source and the source of the “authority” of those who drafted and ratified the constitution were not elected thus the constitution they used to elect Laurel was illegal.

Consequently, how can Laurel be a president of the Philippines while the duly elected was still in office? Quezon’s government in exile did not cease to be our legally constituted government and in fact, the guerrillas and the local governments continued to pledge allegiance to that government.

If the Laurel government is illegal, how can he claim to be president? In fact, the Republic that he headed was not recognized by the family of nations except by the puppet governments of Asia and Japan.

One of the photos I got shows Laurel bowing before the emperor who is several hundred miles away. He bowed at the direction of Tokyo while he was in Manila. Later he went to Japan and was welcomed by the emperor as a vassal.

It is really pathetic that one who claims to be president of the Philippines would bow before the emperor. Only vassals submit thus.

Laurel and the other collaborators escaped to Japan when the Americans landed and after the Japanese surrender were sent back to the Philippines where they were charged with treason. Only the intervention of Manuel Roxas saved them. When Roxas was elected president, one of his first acts was to issue a general amnesty and saved Laurel and thousands of collaborators, some of them charged not only with treason but common crimes, from landing in prison.

That amnesty riled General Douglas MacArthur but he was helpless since Roxas was within his authority to grant amnesty.

Laurel belonged to the political elite with plenty of clout and he was not only saved from prison (though he spent some time in a Japanese cell) but rehabilitated and even considered one of the presidents of the Republic.

That presidency, to repeat is a myth but our government, our national historian continued to keep that myth for whatever reason they have.

Although Quezon died in 1944, he was legally and constitutionally succeeded by Sergio Osmeña so that it cannot be said that there was a hiatus or a vacancy in the presidency that can justify Laurel’s taking over the reins of government.

In time, however, history will correct this anomaly and the presidency will not be marred by the presence of Laurel in the line of presidents.

So far our government is keeping this myth alive but history has a way of making corrections. In Negros we keep alive several historical myths starting with the dramatization of the 1898 Negros Revolution that ought to segregate fact from fiction. The drama is deceiving our young people and ourselves.*

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