Directory_and_Chronicle_1935 — Page 1616

D4

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

Lanao, Sulu and Zamboanga. The number of registered voters is approximately a million.

The provincial and municipal governments are within the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior and Labour. The Executive Bureau, through which the former Department of the Interior, now Department of the Interior and Labour, exercised administrative control and supervision, was abolished effective 1933, and the thirty-eight regularly organized provinces and two so-called special provinces of Batanes and Palawan are now directly supervised by the Department of the Interior and Labour. Through the Bureau of non-Christian Tribes, the Department of the Interior and Labour exercises its administrative control and surpervision over nine specially organized provinces. The chief executive in each province is a provincial governor, who is elected by popular suffrage except in five specially organized provinces under the Bureau of non-Christian Tribes, namely, Bukidnon, Cotabato, Lanao, Mountain Province and Sulu, where he is appointed by the Governor- General subject to confirmation by the Philippine Senate. With the provincial governor are two other members of the provincial board, which constitutes the legislative branch of the provincial government. In all the regularly organized provinces as well as in the two special provinces of Batanes and Palawan the two members of the board are elected by popular vote. In each of the specially organized provinces under the Bureau of non-Christian Tribes, the provincial board is made up of the provincial governor, the provincial treasurer or the provincial secretary- treasurer (who is an appointive official), and a third member who, in the case of the provinces of Agusan, Davao, Nueva Vizcaya, and Zamboanga, is elected by popular vote, and in the case of the provinces of Bukidnon, Cotabato, Lanao, Mountain Province, and Sulu, is elected by the votes of the councilors and vice-presidents of the municipalities and municipal districts. The municipal president is the chief executive in each town or municipality and the local legislative branch is a municipal council composed of the president, the vice-president, and from four to eight councillors, depending upon the classification of the municipality, except in the case of the municipalities under the Bureau of non-Christian Tribes whose number depend upon the number of the barrios in the municipality. The president, the vice-president, and the councillors are all elected by popular vote. In the special provinces under the B.N.C.T. there are still some municipalities with appointive presidents, but the vice-presidents and councillors are elective.

The Philippine judiciary system consists of the Supreme Court, as the highest tribunal; a Court of First Instance for each judicial district, except the ninth district, which has five judges, the same covering the city of Manila; the Municipal Courts of Manila and Baguio; and a Justice of the Peace court for each municipality. The Supreme Court is composed of one chief justice and ten associate justices, all of whom are appointed by the President of the United States with the consent of the United States Senate. The Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over the Courts of First Instance. An appeal lies from the decision of the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands to the Supreme Court of the United States in certain cases.

EDUCATION AND LITERACY

Public education in the Philippines is free, secular and co-educational, and the prin- cipal aim is to make the people socially proficient. As a means to this end, emphasis is placed upon the spread of literacy on the basis of a common language-English. The Bureau of Education maintains a complete system of public education. Public elementary and high schools are distributed throughout the Islands. Insular schools for special education are maintained. The enrolment of students in the public schools is increasing every year and now exeeds one million. Private schools, patterned after the public schools, besides the old Spanish schools and colleges which still survive, have sprung up in the Philippines in recent years. The enrolment in private school and h colleges is around 115,000. These schools offer primary, intermediate, secondary, collegiate, technical and vocation courses, and come under the supervision of the jer Department of Public Instruction. Practically all these offer instruction in English, and even the old Spanish schools and colleges have English as the medium of instruc tion. Upon graduating from the high schools, the students are admittel to higher 9. institutions of learning, among which are the University of the Philippines, established and maintained by the Philippine Government, the University of Santo Tomas, the Colegio de San Juan de Latran, the National University, and the University of Manila.