Word: quirino
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...President Quirino and President Aleman...
...roofed basketball stadium, 863 delegates of the Philippines' Liberal Party gathered one day last week to nominate a presidential candidate. For the first time in the party's brief postwar history, it had a choice to make. The alternatives: to renominate powerful and clever President Elpidio Quirino for a second term, or shuck him and his corruption-tainted regime and nominate peppery Carlos Romulo, ex-Foreign Secretary, ex-president of the United Nations General Assembly...
...Romulo wing calculated it needed only one break on the convention floor to win a majority of delegates. But that one break was crucial. Since many of the delegates were Quirino jobholders or otherwise beholden to him, Romulo demanded a secret ballot. Quirino's professionals deftly outmaneuvered Romulo by taking an open ballot to decide whether to hold a secret ballot. Just as a sudden thunderstorm broke overhead, the results were announced: 243 for the secret ballot, 644 against it. When Romulo's Floor Manager Tomas Cabili added up the figures, the convention broke into a thunderstorm...
Last week Romulo announced that he had resigned his diplomatic jobs and would battle President Quirino for the Liberals' presidential nomination. He was running, said his letter of resignation, because "political confusion, social decay, and a noticeably growing lack of public confidence in government have created a . . . grave national peril." Replied Quirino the next day: "I have decided for the nomination and I shall get it." Countered Romulo, no longer polite to his former boss: "This is the Führer speaking...
Romulo had less than a week before the convention in which to combat Quirino's political skill, his control of the party machinery and of governmental patronage. The odds were heavy against him. Should he manage to beat the islands' slickest politician for the nomination, his opponent in the November election would be the popular Huk-slayer, Ramon Magsaysay. But was Carlos Romulo downhearted? True to form, he beamed a toothy smile for photographers, uttered a headline: "I will not retreat...