Labulabu

Two weeks after the Communist-led Hukbalahaps launched their latest campaign of terror across the Philippine countryside (TIME, April 10), President Elpidio Quirino announced that government forces had once more driven the rebels back into the hills. At the same time, the government placed new restrictions on the release of military news and Manila's newspapers noted a sharp drop in reports of Huk activities.

A few days later in the Philippine Senate, owl-eyed, anti-Quirinist Pablo Angeles David rose to report a new campaign of terror in Pampanga province. The perpetrators, David charged, were not Hukbalahaps, but government constabulary troops out for revenge for the assassination of one of their commanders. On Good Friday, David told the Senate, constabulary troops and civilian guards raided his home town of Bacolor, massacred some 100 men, women & children and burned 130 houses.

Pampanga Governor Jose B. Lingad tried to defend the government, accused David of having once plotted to assassinate President Quirino. In the course of his attack, Lingad dropped an embarrassing admission. "The Huk dissidents," he said, "have been gaining ground. We are being pushed back to where we were in early 1947." This admission disgusted even Quirino's own men. Senate Majority Leader Tomas S. Cabili denounced the government's policies for dealing with the Huks as "utter bankruptcy." "This confession of failure," he added, "has to be made even if it scares the wits off American capital or if we lose face abroad."

At week's end, little Carlos P. Romulo, chief of the Philippine delegation to the United Nations, had some stern strictures for both the abashed Quirino government and the Filipinos themselves. Said he: "Upon this [the elimination of the Hukbalahaps] depends the survival of our democracy or its humiliating descent to the status of a banana republic under a government by coup d'etat."

Many Filipinos, still dazed by Senator David's story of the Good Friday massacre and Governor Lingad's admission of Huk gains, began to wonder if the Huks were the greatest danger in the Philippines. Said a Manila storekeeper: "It's a labulabu, a national free-for-all." President Quirino wanted a chance to put his country's affairs in order. Said he: "I want to have the opportunity to clean my own house. If I fail. Congress can impeach me for non-compliance with my duty under the constitution."

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