The Naval Town Hall, site of the famous drawing of lots described in this article.

Funny but sickening. Throughout my elementary and high school years, I believed that the Americans conquered the Philippines at the turn of the century for the purpose of educating the Filipinos and training them in self-government. After all, Gregorio Zaide said so in his history textbooks, the most available public school reference during those early years.

However, the Zaide-influenced belief was greatly altered during my university years, when I was caught in the wave of historical revisionism in the late 1970s. Dr. Luz U. Ausejo, my professor in Philippine history in Silliman University, did not recommend a textbook for the course. Instead, she assigned us her students to read source documents from the Blair and Robertson collection and other primary sources. She then allowed us to interpret for ourselves our country’s history.

This method opened a whole new world of historical insights that vastly differed from Zaide’s prescriptions. It was time to say goodbye to the "history" that I learned in the elementary and high school years.

After my university studies, I pursued historical research and writing as a hobby. Through this hobby, I realized that my belief in American altruism was mainly inculcated in the classrooms. The more I researched into local history and culture, the more I discovered contradictions between my early belief and the actual historical experience of the people of Leyte and Samar at the hands of the Americans. I expounded on a whole set of contradictions in a six-part series on the history of Biliran Province from 1899 to 1909 (Bankaw News, Nos. 1-6).

In this chapter, I will focus on the raucous municipal election in my hometown of Naval in 1928. (Naval, the capital of Biliran Province, was then a part of Leyte.) That event illustrated how Filipino officials during the American colonial regime messed up and conspired to subvert the fair result of a democratic exercise, and then tried to cover up their mess with the full acquiescence of the American-dominated Supreme Court.

To spice up their stories about election-related fraud and trickery, and to instill caution in over-confident candidates, old folks of Naval are fond of telling and retelling the story about an actual event in the town’s political history. The story is almost legend now, and most of these folks can no longer recall the year of the event’s occurrence nor remember the protagonists. But they can vividly retell the frenzy following the process of breaking the tie between two candidates who garnered the same number of votes during an election for municipal mayor.

Folklore has it that to break the electoral tie, a drawing of lot was conducted at the town hall. Candidate A drew the first lot, which turned out to be the winning lot. In haste, he ran outside the building towards his crowd of supporters, announced that he had won the tie-breaker, called the waiting local band to lead his victory parade, and had the church bells rung to signal that the town had an elected mayor.

Unfortunately for Candidate A, he dropped the winning lot on the ceremonial table where it was drawn without presenting this to the municipal board of canvassers. Just when he had rushed out for his sponsored frenzy, witnesses supposedly saw Candidate B picking the same lot that he had drawn.

After Candidate A’s victory parade returned to the town hall, Candidate B formally presented the winning lot to the municipal board of canvassers, rushed out towards his own crowd of supporters to announce his victory, called the same local band to lead his victory parade, and also had the church bells rung.

The whole town was stunned and amused by the double frenzy, the excitement of which still echoes to this day.

The folk tale concluded that, because of a simple error, Candidate A lost the mayoralty contest.

In contrast to the fable-like narration and the comic effect of the folk tale, the official version featured a tense contest in a wider panorama involving all levels of Filipino officials in the American colonial bureaucracy. If only to placate the patriarch of a family who was favored by American military and civilian officials in Leyte at the turn of the century, the involved Filipino officials bent colonial rules and broke basic norms of decency to ensure that an electorally-defeated American client becomes the mayor of a remote provincial town.

The year was 1928. The occasion was the election for municipal president (municipal mayor in current jargon) of the town of Naval. And the protagonists were Policarpo Redaza, the incumbent mayor running for a third consecutive three-year term, and Francisco D. Enage, son and namesake of the patriarch of an influential Enage family in Leyte. The Supreme Court decision (Radaza vs. Enaje, Philippine Reports, Vol. 53, pp. 149-154) quoted or narrated the relevant facts of the case, much of which are as follows:

1. Redaza and Enage each obtained 358 votes in all precincts of the municipality during the June 5, 1928 election. Redaza attested that he could have won the election outright had the board of election inspectors of two precincts not "acted illegally," apparently referring to fraud committed by Enage supporters which resulted in the electoral tie.

2. The municipal council of Naval, acting as the municipal board of canvassers, declared a tie in the election for the office of municipal president in its session on June 6, 1928.

3. In accordance with the provisions of the Election Law governing cases of electoral tie for the office of the municipal president, lots were drawn on June 14, 1928 before the municipal council acting as municipal board of canvassers. This exercise appeared to have been the subject event in the folk version. Though Enage apparently picked the winning lot, Redaza thereafter actually possessed and presented this winning lot and was presumably declared winner by the municipal board of canvassers.

4. Enage appealed to the Court of First Instance of Leyte in Tacloban. The court issued a writ of mandamus to the municipal council of Naval to have the candidates draw lots again.

5. The second drawing of lots was conducted on August 16, 1928. Redaza won the second draw and was proclaimed president-elect of Naval by the municipal board of canvassers.

6. Enage appealed again to the Court of First Instance of Leyte. In a writ of mandamus, the court ordered the municipal council of Naval, acting as municipal board of canvassers, to proclaim Enage as president-elect of Naval. The order was heeded by the municipal council in its session on October 8, 1928.

7. On October 16, 1928, the date fixed by law for the induction into office of the new officers elected on June 5, 1928, Enage was able to take the required oath of office (apparently in Tacloban) ahead of Redaza, who was until then "protecting" his office in Naval. The order for Redaza to turn over the office to Enage was relayed through telegram by Vicente de la Cruz, the Tacloban-based governor of Leyte.

8. Redaza protested and appealed the case before the Supreme Court, which dismissed the case on the following grounds:

"The protestant, in alleging and contending that he was proclaimed the winner in the drawing of lots by reason of the tie, and thereafter in taking possession of the office, and attempting to prevent the protestee from holding it, may and should be considered to have deliberately induced his opponent to believe that the canvass which resulted in a tie was legal, and to act upon said belief in the validity of said canvass and tie, and, therefore, he cannot be permitted to deny his own acts."

9. One of Redaza’s two lawyers during the appeal before the Supreme Court was Francisco Enage, Tacloban-based namesake of his electoral opponent.

10. The writer of the Supreme Court decision promulgated on March 27, 1929 was Justice Norberto Romualdez, a Leyteño who was one of two Filipino justices in the seven-member high court. The decision was concurred by Justices Johnson, Street, Malcolm, Ostrand, Johns and Villa-Real.

11. The names of the protagonists were misspelled (deliberately?) by Justice Romualdez in the published Supreme Court decision. The family name of Policarpo Redaza was printed as Radaza, while the family name of Francisco Enage de Jesus was printed as Enaje (underscoring supplied).

The present generation of Navaleños neither remembers Policarpo Redaza nor cares for the fact that the street where he lived had been named after him. He lived in a house on the lot beside the Hotricano ancestral house on Redaza Street. Efforts by this writer to trace a descendant of Redaza have been fruitless so far.

But enough had been told and known about Francisco Enage de Jesus, the father of Redaza’s opponent..

Family lore handed down to the present generation of Enage clan members in Barangay Villalon, Calubian town tells that Francisco Enage de Jesus came from Luzon, perhaps from Bicol. His past and origin are a mystery to his descendants. He seemed to have been a fugitive who fled by joining a circus troupe that traveled in the Visayas.

When the circus was in Carigara, Leyte, Enage got enamoured with and eventually married a daughter of Capitan (Florencio?) Hanopol, a powerful and influential person who had served as capitan municipal (mayor) of Carigara for several years.

This Enage family seemed to have established residences both in Naval and in Tacloban. The children appeared to have been born and raised in Naval, but took their basic education in Tacloban.

Family lore also told how this family acquired its wealth. It seemed the elder Francisco was also a revolutionist with link to Pres. Aguinaldo in Luzon. After the decision to spread the revolution to the Visayas at the eve of the Philippine-American War, Enage and the young (later president) Sergio Osmeña of Cebu hopped from island to island to reach Leyte. Here, the two allegedly halved the revolutionary funds entrusted to them. Enage’s share was used to purchase the family hacienda (large tract of land) in Villalon, a barangay across the sea from Naval. (This barangay was part of Leyte-Leyte until 1919, when Calubian was carved out of its mother town, apparently as another government concession to the influential Enage family.)

A story about Francisco Enage de Jesus, the American-favored public official, can be pieced out of a report of appointments made by the American governor-general between Oct. 19, 1905 and Sept. 15, 1906.

On Dec. 7, 1905, Francisco Enage de Jesus was appointed auxiliary justice of the peace of Naval. The day after, Isidoro Quijano, the incumbent auxiliary justice of the peace, resigned from his position.

More than one month later, on Jan. 24, 1906, Enage was appointed justice of the peace of Naval. That same day, Victoriano E. Ballesteros, the incumbent justice of the peace, resigned from his position and Benigno Garrido was appointed auxiliary justice of the peace. Enage was reappointed to the same position on Sept. 14, 1906.

Enage was a contemporary of Eugenio Obispo, the justice of the peace of the neighboring town of Almeria. Folk depositions identified Obispo as the mastermind behind the religious controversy in Almeria and the poblacion transfer to Kawayan during 1905-1906 (Bankaw News, No. 5, Feb. 15-21, 1995).

This writer suspects that Enage and Obispo were responsible for the suppression and clean-up of the official records of American-sponsored atrocities related to the Pulahan War in Biliran in 1902 (Bankaw News, No. 4, Feb. 8-14, 1995). The virtual absence of accounts on the experimental combats of the Insular (Philippine) Constabulary in Biliran Island in official histories of that defunct organization is a testament to Enage’s and Obispo’s efficiency as American colonial servants.

This writer also suspects Enage’s role in other mischief. One was the approved plan to convert Naval into a barrio of Biliran town, which resulted in a "civil war" between both towns in 1909 (Bankaw News, No. 5, Feb. 15-21, 1995). Another Francisco Enage was then governor of Leyte. (This Francisco, who would later become Redaza’s lawyer, was also a senator from Leyte and was considered the "Father of the Court of Appeals" of the country.) The other was the fact that official records pertaining to Naval during the early American period up to 1916 (the year the Jones Law was passed) are missing in the Leyte Provincial Capitol archives.

Enage was already an old man when his son ran and "won" as municipal president of Naval against Redaza in June 1928. The subsequent legal battle seemed to have strained him. He died on August 2, 1929, a few months after the Supreme Court upheld his son’s electoral "victory" on March 27, 1929. The name in his tombstone, Francisco Enage de Jesus, belied the Supreme Court’s spelling of his family name.

Even in death, the elder Enage could not be reconciled with Redaza. Enage was buried in the existing (then new) Catholic cemetery. Redaza was buried in the old Catholic cemetery, now the site of the Biliran Provincial Hospital.

The original article was premised on the assumption that there were only two prominent persons named Francisco Enage in Leyte at the turn of the century, and that they were father and son from the same family. But this premise was refuted by Felix Santolorin, in his mid-80s at the time of the interview in 1996, months after the publication of the article.

Santolorin differentiated the elder Francisco Enage in Naval and the Francisco Enage in Tacloban by their middle names (de Jesus in Naval and a forgotten name for the one in Tacloban, who was a lawyer). He also said that the Francisco Enage who ran against Redaza was the son of the elder Francisco, a mechanical engineer who had studied as a pensionado (government scholar) in the United States. It was this young Francisco Enage who later became a congressman. An Enage Street in Carigara town was presumably named after him, not after his father.

Santolorin was an eyewitness of the event discussed in this article. As a teenager in 1928, he was a supporter of Redaza and was in the town hall area during the famous drawing of lots. He admitted their candidate lost during the draw. He was no longer very clear as to who cheated whom during the process. He thought it was Enage who did it. But a careful reconstruction of the event based on official accounts of the case suggests it was Redaza who had outwitted his neophyte opponent.

Anyway, the young Francisco eventually assumed his post as municipal president of Naval. To consolidate his hold on power, his family imposed a reign of terror in town. A hired thug was imported from Tacloban to disrupt any public gathering of more than three people.

For an example, Santolorin cited the case of a dance party he attended in a private house. There were no electronic gadgets then. Instead, some boys and girls would make music by singing to the accompaniment of a guitar and the others would take their turn to dance. In the midst of their fun, the hired thug came and disrupted the affair by beating up the boys. Santolorin jumped out of a window and ran home.

The hired thug was eventually murdered during a furlough in Tacloban. Santolorin described how this happened. The guy had just alighted from a tartanilya (horse rig or calesa) when he was hacked to death with a bolo near El Reposo, the cemetery road.

The published Supreme Court decision on the electoral contest between Redaza and Enage showed high-ranking Leyteño officials during the American colonial regime at their arrogant and conspiratorial worst.

The Redaza vs. Enage case mirrors the political power situation in Leyte during the 1920s. What the family of Francisco Enage de Jesus wanted, they got. It was as simple as that. Even Supreme Court Justice Norberto Romualdez had to give in to them. (This reminds us of the Marcos years when the Romualdezes and the Marcoses also got what they wanted.)

Justice Romualdez, out of delicadeza, should have inhibited himself from the case, which involved fellow Leyteños who belonged to his social circle in Tacloban. But he did not. In fact, he conspired to consummate a classic travesty of democratic elections, which the Americans claimed as their foremost colonial legacy.

The case of Redaza, although "winnable," looked hopeless before the American-dominated Supreme Court. Conflict of interest filled the air. One of Redaza’s two lawyers was even another Francisco Enage, a contemporary of the elder Francisco, the father of Redaza’s opponent.

In the Philippine context, Redaza’s lawyer was a virtual relative of his opponent. But perhaps Redaza did not have a choice. Against an Enage, it might be that no other Tacloban lawyer was willing to take his case. Fate, and American sense of justice and fairness, seemed to be his last hope to obtain justice.

But between Redaza and good fate was Justice Romualdez, who dashed Redaza’s hopes and tried to cover up his own partiality by misspelling the names of the protagonists in the Supreme Court decision that he himself wrote.

After the case was finally resolved in Enage’s favor, the people of Naval took the matter into their own hands. They outcast the Enage family. A local tradition, one that makes migrant families who have breached some observed norms of decency feel unwanted and unneeded, might have influenced this family to sell all their properties in Naval and settle down in their hacienda in Barangay Villalon, Calubian, Leyte, just across the Biliran Channel from Naval.

A milestone in Naval history that could have been influenced by the Supreme Court decision of the Redaza vs. Enage case was the municipal council decision to change the Spanish names (i.e, Legazpi, Colon, etc.) of local streets, mostly with the names of famous local forebears. Ballesteros and Redaza, whom Francisco Enage de Jesus had edged out of public office, each had a street named after them. Enage’s name was consigned to oblivion.

The hysteria and social tension attendant to the Redaza vs. Enage electoral contest seemed to have strengthened democratic elections as an institution in Naval. In 1957, Eduardo A. Chico, a graduating seminary student who conducted research on Naval history, wrote his accolade on the town’s political process as follows:

"Politics in Naval is interesting for the very reason that the opposing parties fight each other tooth-and-nail. But after the election, they forget all about their misunderstanding and differences, and all the people would rejoice in the triumph of the (winning) candidate irrespective of party affiliation."

Around that time (1957), a public school teacher tried to rig the election proceedings in the precinct of his assignment as poll clerk in Lico, a remote barangay of the town. A concerned barangay resident formally charged him in court, for which act he was convicted and dismissed from the teaching profession. References to his name and case have been sufficient reasons for poll clerks, poll watchers, and voters in Naval to observe proper decorum in the precincts.

In general, up to the present, the conduct of elections in Naval is procedurally as clean and fair as can be. About the only noticeable irregularity is vote-buying, which is discreetly done elsewhere, and hardly in the precincts. Even then, vote-buying money has never been a single factor for election victory in this town. Personal qualifications and credentials of the winning candidates have also mattered.

A town that was heaped with extreme hatred and contempt by a succession of American colonial officials and their Filipino surrogates holds the most vibrant democratic elections in this part of the country.