Manuel Luis Quezon Facts

Manuel Luis Quezon (1878-1944) was the first president of the

Commonwealth of the Philippines. He prepared the groundwork for
Philippine independence in 1946.
Manuel Quezon was born on Aug. 19, 1878, to Lucio Quezon and Maria Molina,
both schoolteachers, in Baler, Tayabas (now Quezon) Province, in Luzon. Manuel
enrolled at San Juan de Letran College, after which he was appointed lecturer at
the University of Santo Tomás. There he studied law, but his studies were
interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.
Quezon was considered "bright but lazy"; but when he joined the revolutionary
forces of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo during the revolution against Spain, Quezon
displayed his fearless, bold, and quick-tempered style of fighting. He was
promoted from private to major until, in 1899, he surrendered to the Americans,
spent 6 months in jail, and then returned to Manila.

Early Public Offices

In 1903 Quezon passed the bar examination and set up practice in Baler. He
gave up private practice to assume the post of provincial fiscal of Mindoro and
later of Tayabas. In 1906 he was elected provincial governor. His campaign
showed his native political wisdom when he sided with popular issues in a
somewhat opportunistic manner. Often he abandoned consistency for the sake
of pursuing what to his enemies was nothing but plain demagoguery.
In 1907 Quezon ran successfully as candidate for the Philippine Assembly on the
Nacionalista party platform. In the Assembly he was elected floor leader, and
Sergio Osmeña, his archrival, became Speaker of the House. Quezon served as
resident commissioner in Washington, D. C. (1909-1916), where he became
notorious as a romantic dancer, playboy diplomat, and shrewd lobbyist. He was
instrumental in having a law revised so that Filipinos would form a majority in
the Philippine Commission, the highest governing body in the Philippines. In
February 1916 he cosponsored the Jones Act, which gave the Filipinos the power
to legislate for themselves subject to veto by the American governor general.
With this act, Quezon returned home a hero.
In 1916 Quezon was elected to the Senate, and soon became its president. Here
he began attacking Osmeña for the latter's theory of "unipersonal" leadership.
Quezon's "collectivist" idea of leadership won in the 1922 election. Soon,
however, the two warring factions of the Nacionalista party united in the Partido
Nacionalista Consolidado, headed by Quezon, who then became president of the
party.
In 1933 a bill providing for the future independence of the Philippines, the Hare-
Hawes-Cutting Bill, was passed by the U.S. Senate. Quezon opposed the new law
because "America would still hold military and naval bases in the Philippines
even after the latter's independence, and, moreover, export duties regulated in
the law would destroy both industry and trade." He was referring to what has
since become the most troublesome cause of conflict between the Philippines
and the United States: the right of jurisdiction over military bases and the
special trade concessions given to landlords, compradors, and bureaucrat-
capitalists with interests in export industries.
The real cause of Quezon's opposition to the law, apart from his objection to
specific provisions, was the fact that it was identified with the Osmeña faction.
Quezon led a mission to the United States to work for a bill generally similar to
the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Law, the Tydings-McDuffie Law, known also as the
Philippine Independence Act. This law provided for Philippine independence in
1946 and tax-free importation of Philippine products such as sugar, coconut oil,
and cordage into the United States and the diplomatic negotiation of the military
bases issue.

President of the Philippines

In September 1935, under the banner of a coalition party, Quezon was elected
first president of the commonwealth, with Osmeña as vice president. Quezon's
first act as chief executive was to push a national defense bill through the
rubber-stamp unicameral legislature, which he controlled. This bill made him
chairman of the Council for National Defense, with the chief of staff of the armed
forces directly subordinate to him.
On Aug. 10, 1940, influenced by the growing Japanese imperialist
encroachment, Quezon jammed through the National Assembly the Emergency
Powers Bill, which vested him with dictatorial powers. Passed by a vote of 62 to
1, the bill gave Quezon the authority to change even the social and economic
structure of the country: he was given the authority to require civilians to render
service to the government, to outlaw strikes, to commandeer shipping and other
transportation, to control fuel resources, to revise the educational system, and
so forth.
In November 1941 Quezon was reelected president of the commonwealth. When
the Japanese forces occupied Manila in 1942, Quezon and his Cabinet fled from
the Philippines and set up an exile government in Washington in May 1942.
Quezon died on Aug. 1, 1944, a year before the liberation of the Philippines.

Assessment of Quezon
Although Quezon lived through the most turbulent times in Philippine history,
when the peasantry—who composed 75 percent of the people—was rebelling
against social injustice and age-old exploitation, he failed to institute long-
lasting reforms in land tenancy, wages, income distribution, and other areas of
crisis. Essentially a politician who was both tactful and bullheaded, supple and
compulsive, Quezon served mainly the interest of the Filipino elite, or ruling
oligarchy (about 200 families), who owned and controlled the estates and
businesses.
Quezon became a popular hero when he attacked the racist policies of Governor
Leonard Wood with his declaration that he preferred "a government run like hell
by Filipinos to one run like heaven by Americans." Senator Claro M. Recto, a
contemporary, pronounced the most balanced and acute judgment when he
described Quezon as "a successful politician … because he was a master of
political intrigue. He knew how to build strong and loyal friendships even among
political opponents, but he knew also how to excite envy, distrust, ambition,
jealousy, even among his own loyal followers."