TODAY we remember the late Manuel Luis Molina Quezon, the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth, because it’s his 130th birthday anniversary. He was born on August 19, 1878.

In fact, we remember Quezon the whole month of August because the month has been declared Lung Month in his honor. He died of tuberculosis, in his time a fatal respiratory disease, on August 1, 1944.

Unfortunately, we also remember him at this time when the government is run like hell by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. We are having second thoughts about the famous Quezon quotation: “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to one run like heaven by the Americans.”

In my youth, Quezon was such an idol to me that, after only one year of college at UP-Iloilo, I went to Manila to take up journalism at a private school named after him, the Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU).

So it is not surprising that I have not forgotten what I have learned about Quezon.

I remember my grade four teacher joking, “Don’t be like Quezon. He was a lazy student who disliked doing his homework.”

But she was quick to add that when the revolutionary forces of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declared revolution against the Spanish regime in 1898, “Quezon was among those who bravely took up arms.”

After the Spanish-American war, Quezon resumed his law studies at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila .

In 1903, Quezon passed the bar examination and set up practice in his birthplace of Baler, Tayabas (now Quezon Province ).

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.

In 1907, Quezon ran for the Philippine Assembly under the Nacionalista party and won. In 1916 he was elected to the Senate, and soon became its president.

In 1933, a bill providing for the future independence of the Philippines , the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill, passed 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 also attacked the racist policies of the US . It was then that he voiced out his preference for a Filipino government run like hell. Such open display of bravado against a foreign power made him a folk hero.

Quezon led a mission to the United States to work for a bill that would eventually be passed as the Tydings-McDuffie Law, providing for Philippine independence in 1946.

In September 1935, Quezon was elected first president of the commonwealth, with Sergio Osmeña as vice president.

In November 1941 Quezon was reelected president of the commonwealth. When the Japanese forces occupied Manila in 1942, he and his Cabinet fled from the Philippines and set up an exile government in Washington in May 1942. He died in Australia on Aug. 1, 1944, a year before the liberation of the Philippines .

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Heard the news that my younger brother, Jesse Vego, has been relieved of his post as provincial environment and natural resources officer (PENRO) by Antique Governor Sally Zaldivar Perez. This could not be true because the governor has no authority to sack an official of DENR, a national office. However, she might have prevailed upon DENR Secretary Lito Atienza to replace my brother with somebody lower in rank.

When I asked brod Jesse about it, he would not confirm because he had not received any relief order from Atienza.

He revealed his suspicion, however, that the governor must have resented his action of subjecting 10,000 pieces of driftwood (“courtesy” of the June 21, 2008 flood) to proper inventory first instead of heeding the call of the governor to immediately give the driftwood away to the people.

Wow, Gob, indi man husto ang imo gusto nga i-sidestep mo ang DENR inventory policy just to appease favored beneficiaries. Pamolitika tana imo ngara!

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