Pascual Racuyal

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Pascual Racuyal (fl. 1986) was a Filipino eccentric and aspirant for the Philippine presidency, whose perseverance despite total lack of success at that venture earned him folk status. Racuyal sought the presidency in every Philippine presidential election beginning in 1935 (against Manuel Quezon and Emilio Aguinaldo) until 1986 (against Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino).

There were questions as to Racuyal’s mental stability. Among his promises should he be elected to the presidency was to construct roads out of plastic to prevent their further deterioration. When he invited Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson to be his running mate in the 1953 presidential elections, the latter called Racuyal “strictly fiction, utterly fantastic and incredible”. Nonetheless, as time passed, his repeated candidacy provided for an amusing mild diversion to a frequently heated election atmosphere.

Unlike Harold Stassen, the former Minnesota governor whose repeated runs for the American presidency earned him renown of a similar nature, Racuyal, a mechanic by profession, was never a credible political figure. His final attempt at the presidency in 1986 was thwarted after the Commission on Elections disqualified him as a “nuisance candidate”.