President Ramon Magsaysay last days - Part 2

This is taken from the Official Gazette on how it recorded the last days of President Magsaysay which were spent in Cebu:

“The President’s statements bearing on neutralism and ultra-nationalism were apparently aimed at the campaign line of Sen. Claro M. Recto, who is opposing him for the presidency in the election this November.

“Neutralism is un-Filipino,” President Magsaysay told graduating students of the Southwestern College. “To attempt to foist it upon our people is to do them a grave disservice. The country has no need of fence-sitters in the struggle to preserve our way of life. Either we continually love and live this way of life, or communism stretching across the earth and threatening us here and now, will choke it from the body of our nation.”

“At the University of San Carlos, the President declared, “You do not have to be anti-American or anti-foreign in order to be resoundingly pro-Filipino. You are the battlefield on which future wars will be won or lost—you cannot remain neutral—you will have to take a stand.”

“He recalled to the graduates of the Southwestern Colleges that “we are a people with a history of courage” in which “there is no place for the fear of freedom, the fear to be on the side of freedom, the fear to be against slavery, the fear to strike a light for liberty amid the encircling gloom that is communism.”

“Communism is anti-Filipino,” President Magsaysay said. “When communist sympathizers in the Philippines say that their movement is indigenous and not under the influence or control of any alien power, it is merely to coat with the veneer of a so-called Filipinism the dagger that they have aimed at the very heart of the Filipino way of life.

“We cannot for one moment afford to put in jeopardy the freedom of this way of life. Between it and communism there can be no peace, no grey neutralizing co-existence, no gray neutralism. There can only be conflict—total and without reconciliation.”

“The President pointed out that the Philippines remains free in a world locked in a struggle between democracy and communism. “In spite of considerable rant and ill humor, usually around election time,” he said, “we are a free people.”

“It is the people’s privilege to grumble, he said, “and no doubt we have things to grumble about, but we are better off than many other national groups than it is possible to name.”

“It is also the people’s right to demand a change, the President continued, “and when enough of us want it, to get it. No concentration camp or firing squad awaits us if we happen to be of the minority.” (To be continued)