CURSED?
5 September 2024
Unfinished terms and the National Museum
Has the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) pronounced a curse on Philippine Presidents whose administrations, inaugurated in its confines, ended prematurely?
According to Wikipedia, the neoclassical building was built in 1921 and was the home of the bicameral congress from 1926 to 1972 hence its name as the Old Legislative Building.
There is one intriguing detail about the NMP that many Filipinos may find interesting: four Philippine Presidents took their oaths in it and the first three failed to finish their terms.
President Manuel Luis Quezon took his oath at the steps of the Old Legislative Building, the old name of the NMP, before Chief Justice Ramon Avanceña on Nov. 15, 1935 after winning the first national presidential election on Sept. 16, 1935.
The first president of the Commonwealth was able to seek reelection in 1941 after a constitutional amendment allowed him to serve a second term until 1943. He won the 1941 election just before the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.
While his term was supposed to expire in 1943, Quezon remained in office after the United States Senate unanimously approved a resolution suspending the constitutional provisions for presidential succession until after the Philippines was liberated.
Quezon, however, died of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake, New York on Aug. 1, 1944 at the age of 65, a year before the war ended.
The second one who followed his lead was President Jose Paciano Laurel who took his oath before Chief Justice Jose Yulo on Oct. 14, 1943. Laurel, who was acting Secretary of Justice, had been instructed by Quezon to stay during the Japanese occupation. He was elected by the National Assembly with no small amount of pressure from the invading forces.
On Aug. 17, 1945, just more than two years after he took his oath at the NMP, Laurel issued Executive Proclamation in Nara, Japan to dissolve his regime. Two days earlier, Japanese Emperor Hirohito declared Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers.
Laurel was imprisoned in Yokohama with his son, Jose Laurel III and Benigno Aquino Sr. He returned to the Philippines in 1946 and chose to be imprisoned at the National Bilibid Prison than accept conditions for technical custody at his home in Paco, Manila.
On Nov. 6, 1959, he succumbed after suffering a massive heart attack and cerebral hemorrhage in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Manila. He was 68.
President Manuel Roxas was inaugurated as president of the Commonwealth on May 28, 1946 at the ruins of the NMP, then known as the Legislative Building, before Chief Justice Manual Moran. The Americans destroyed the building in the dying days of World War II to flesh out Japanese soldiers who had turned it into a stronghold.
Roxas ended his brief tenure as the last President of the Commonwealth when the third Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated. He went on to serve as the fifth President of the Philippines, the first under the Independent Republic.
On April 15, 1948, Roxas died of multiple heart attacks hours after delivering a speech before the United States Thirteenth Air Force in Clark Air Base, Pampanga. It was just a little more than two years after 56-year-old Roxas took his oath at the ruins of what is now called the NMP.
The next 11 Presidents stayed away from the NMP. Three of them, Presidents Ramon Magsaysay, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and Joseph Estrada failed to finish their terms. Magsaysay died in a plane crash while Marcos Sr. and Estrada were unseated in popular uprisings.
President Rodrigo Duterte took his oath in Malacañang in simple rites and bowed out of office after six years with the highest approval rating ever for a Philippine President.
On June 30, 2022, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. returned to the NMP on his inauguration as the country’s 17th President.
Just over two years into his term, there is growing dissatisfaction as shown by the fall in his approval ratings to 53% and trust ratings to 52% according to the Pulse Asia survey in June.
Completely silent both to allegations of cocaine use and calls for him to undergo hair follicle drug test, President Marcos is having his hands full against a worsening economy with government debt reaching a record-high P15.69 trillion, deteriorating peace and order and threats of war with superpower China.
It is too early to say that President Marcos will go the way of the three other presidents who took their oaths at the NMP. Still, what some suspect as a curse hang like a sword of Damocles that won’t go away given the battles BBM is waging on many fronts.
Is there really a curse at work? No one can tell for sure.
American author Louis Sachar noted that a lot of people don’t believe in curses.
“A lot of people don’t believe in yellow-spotted lizards either, but if one bites you, it doesn’t make a difference whether you believe in it or not,” Sachar added, adding fuel to the fire.
The first three all stepped down ahead of schedule. Will BBM be the exception, or will he complete the NMP’s growing mystique?
FOTOS/ Ctto
