It may have been that in the majority of these provinces municipal governments, formed in accordance with the provisions of the decree of June 18, had been established; but provincial governments had not been established in all of them, and tranquillity did not reign in any of them, as they were the scene of operations against the Spaniards. There could not well have been nine thousand prisoners in his hands at this time, as that was claimed later when a large additional number of Spaniards had surrendered. As for the thirty thousand men organized as a regular army, there may be a certain difference of opinion as to what constitutes a regular army; the men who saw Aguinaldo’s force then, and who have read the papers of its leaders, must be of the opinion that that force was not a regular army. Probably only Manila Province had a provincial government on August 6. Its local presidentes met at Cavite Viejo on August 3 and elected three members of congress from the province, and also the members of the provincial government. The election took place under the supervision of Colonel Teodoro Gonzales, whom Aguinaldo had appointed governor of Manila Province on August 1. He remained governor after the election was held. Not until August 17 did the local presidentes of Bulacan assemble under the presidency of the secretary of the interior and proceed to elect two members to congress and the members of the provincial government. Not until August 20 was there an election for the members of the provincial government of Cavite Province. This was held in the town of Cavite. Isaac Fernando Rios, who was afterwards a member of the Filipino junta in Madrid, was chosen a representative of the province; but as he wrote that he was in favour of coming to some agreement with Spain which would permit the development of the Philippines, without abandoning the sovereignty of that country, Aguinaldo promptly disapproved his election[17] and ordered a new one held for the office thus left vacant. On October 2, 1899, Aguinaldo approved the result of a new election held there because four of the five high officials of the province had absented themselves, while one of them had died. Of the men who had so absented themselves one had gone abroad, while the other three had remained in Manila or Cavite under the government of the United States.[18]
The people of the provinces obeyed the men who had arms in their hands. It is not probable that many of them had any conviction concerning the form of government which would be best for the Philippines. There were no signs of a spontaneous desire for a republic. Orders came from the group about Aguinaldo, and the people accepted a dictator and a republic as they accepted a president and a republic, without knowing, and probably without caring very much, what it all meant, except that they hoped that taxes would cease with the departure of the friars. A determined and well-organized minority had succeeded in imposing its will upon an unorganized, heterogeneous, and leaderless majority.
As soon as a province was occupied by the Insurgents it was divided into territorial zones within which command was exerted by military officers. On July 20, 1898, Cavite had been divided into four zones, and next day Brigadier-General Artemio Ricarte was placed in command of the province and the first zone.
By July 7 Bulacan Province had been divided into six zones, and Nueva Ecija into four zones, with a separate commander for each zone. These men established the government prescribed by Aguinaldo’s decrees of the middle of June. Probably by the end of July Aguinaldo’s municipal governments had been established in the greater part of the towns of Luzón. These governments were not established by the mass of the people. The mass of the people were not consulted, but they were not in the habit of being consulted in such matters and probably saw no necessity for it in this case. As an evidence of this we have the fact that from the beginning the acts of election were almost always drawn up in Spanish, although by far the greater portion of the people of the archipelago spoke only the native dialects.
The method of establishing these municipal governments employed in Cavite in June, 1898, was continued to the end of Aguinaldo’s rule. It was the same in different places and at different times. Data obtained from reports and documents written in towns far removed from each other follow. They must be considered together in order to obtain an idea of what this method really was.
When the Insurgent movement had progressed sufficiently far, the leaders collected their adherents and obtained recognition as the heads of their provinces or districts. For example, representatives of the towns of Pampanga assembled at San Fernando on June 26, 1898, and under the presidency of General Maximo Hizon agreed to yield him “complete obedience as military governor of the province and representative of the illustrious dictator of these Philippine Islands.”[19] The town of Macabebe refused to send any delegates to this gathering. Commissioners, in almost every case officers of Aguinaldo’s army, were empowered by him to establish the so-called republican government. They appointed delegates who proceeded to the smaller towns and held elections; but whenever possible the commissioner of Aguinaldo presided. In many cases these delegates were lieutenants of the army. The commissioners selected the electors, for they had all to be “marked out by their good conduct, their wealth, and their social position,” and they had all to be in favour of independence. They then presided at the elections, which were viva voce. They apparently selected the people to be elected, and forwarded a record of the proceedings to the central government. The election had to be approved by the dictator or president before the successful candidates could assume the duties of their offices. Later on, the military commanders remote from the seat of government were authorized to approve elections and install the successful candidates, but the records of election had even then to be forwarded to the capital for approval, the action of the commissioner not being final.
The commissioners do not seem to have been able to find many men who had the necessary requisites for electors. In the town of Lipa, Batangas Province, with a population of forty thousand seven hundred forty-three, at the election held July 3, 1898, a presidente was chosen for whom twenty-five votes were cast. On November 23, 1898, an election was held at Vigan, Ilocos Sur, for a presidente to succeed one who had been elected representative in congress. One hundred and sixteen votes were cast. The population of Vigan is nineteen thousand. On October 5, 1898, at Echague, Isabela Province, a presidente was elected for whom fifty-four votes were cast. The population of Echague is fifty-four thousand. On October 2, 1898, at Cabagan Nuevo, Isabela, one hundred and eleven men voted out of a population of sixty-two hundred and forty. On January 29, 1899, the town of Hernani, in Samar, elected its municipal officials under the supervision of V. Lukban. Fifty-four men voted. The town has a population of twenty-five hundred and fifty-five.
The elections, so-called, were not always held without protest. For example, the town of San José, Batangas, protested unavailingly to Aguinaldo against the result of an election held at 10 P.M., in a storm of rain. Men who had been on friendly terms with the Spaniards were usually excluded from all participation. If in spite of the precautions taken men were elected who were disliked by the commissioner or his supporters, the election could be set aside on the ground that the person elected was not an adherent of the revolution.
The elections were often held in a singular manner, as in the following case:[20]—
“On August 20, 1898, four men of Tondo appeared before Aguinaldo on Bacoor and announced that they were representatives of the people of the district, who loved liberty. Then in accordance with the directions of the president of the republic under the supervision of the secretary of the interior, they drew lots from a hat to decide how the offices of the head of the district, delegate of police, delegate of the treasury and delegate of justice were to be distributed. The decision having been made in this simple fashion, Aguinaldo gravely approved the election as expressing the will of the people. Perhaps it did, for they seem to have continued, at least for a time, to obey them. On November 14, 1898, Aguinaldo again approved an election for local officials in Tondo which since August 13 had been within the American lines.”