DACUMOS, Alexander N.

BMLS II-2

Manuel Roxas

Manuel Roxas, (born Jan. 1, 1892, Capiz, Phil.—died April 15, 1948, Clark Field, Pampanga), political
leader and first president (1946–48) of the independent Republic of the Philippines.

After studying law at the University of the Philippines, near Manila, Roxas began his political career in
1917 as a member of the municipal council of Capiz (renamed Roxas in 1949). He was governor of the
province of Capiz in 1919–21 and was then elected to the Philippine House of Representatives,
subsequently serving as Speaker of the House and a member of the Council of State. In 1923 he and
Manuel Quezon, the president of the Senate, resigned in protest from the Council of State when the U.S.
governor-general (Leonard Wood) began vetoing bills passed by the Philippine legislature. In 1932 Roxas
and Sergio Osmeña, the Nacionalista Party leader, led the Philippine Independence Mission to
Washington, D.C., where they influenced the passage of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act. Roxas was later
opposed by Quezon, who held that the act compromised future Philippine independence; the
Nacionalista Party was split between them on this issue. In 1934, however, Roxas was a member of the
convention that drew up a constitution under the revised Philippine Independence and Commonwealth
Act (Tydings-McDuffie Act). Roxas also served as secretary of finance in the Commonwealth government
(1938–40).

During World War II Roxas served in the pro-Japanese government of José Laurel by acquiring supplies of
rice for the Japanese army. Although a court was established after the war to try collaborators, Roxas
was defended by his friend General Douglas MacArthur. Roxas was elected president of the
Commonwealth in 1946 as the nominee of the liberal wing of the Nacionalista Party (which became the
Liberal Party), and, when independence was declared on July 4, he became the first president of the new
republic.

Although Roxas was successful in getting rehabilitation funds from the United States after independence,
he was forced to concede military bases (23 of which were leased for 99 years), trade restrictions for
Philippine citizens, and special privileges for U.S. property owners and investors. His administration was
marred by graft and corruption; moreover, the abuses of the provincial military police contributed to the
rise of the left-wing Hukbalahap (Huk) movement in the countryside. His heavy-handed attempts to
crush the Huks led to widespread peasant disaffection. Roxas died in office in 1948 and was succeeded
by his vice president, Elpidio Quirino.

Elpidio Quirino

Elpidio Quirino, (born Nov. 16, 1890, Vigan, Phil.—died Feb. 28, 1956, Novaliches), political leader and
second president of the independent Republic of the Philippines.

After obtaining a law degree from the University of the Philippines, near Manila, in 1915, Quirino
practiced law until he was elected a member of the Philippine House of Representatives in 1919–25 and
a senator in 1925–31. In 1934 he was a member of the Philippine independence mission to Washington,
D.C., headed by Manuel Quezon, which secured the passage in Congress of the Tydings–McDuffie Act,
setting the date for Philippine independence as July 4, 1946. He was also elected to the convention that
drafted a constitution for the new Philippine Commonwealth. Subsequently he served as secretary of
finance and secretary of the interior in the Commonwealth government.

Tydings-McDuffie Act, signing of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Philippine Commonwealth and
Independence Act on March 24, 1934. Standing behind him (left to right) are Wyoming Democratic Sen.
Joseph O'Mahoney, Secretary of War George H. Dern, Filipino Sen. Elpidio Quirino, Filipino leader and
future president Manuel Quezon, Maryland Democratic Sen. Millard E. Tydings, and Chief of the Bureau
of Insular Affairs C.F. Cox.

After World War II, Quirino served as secretary of state and vice president under the first president of
the independent Philippines, Manuel Roxas. When Roxas died on April 15, 1948, Quirino succeeded to
the presidency. The following year, he was elected president for a four-year term on the Liberal Party
ticket, defeating the Nacionalista candidate.

President Quirino’s administration faced a serious threat in the form of the Communist-led Hukbalahap
(Huk) movement. Though the Huks originally had been an anti-Japanese guerrilla army in Luzon, the
Communists steadily gained control over the leadership, and, when Quirino’s negotiations with Huk
commander Luis Taruc broke down in 1948, Taruc openly declared himself a Communist and called for
the overthrow of the government. By 1950 the Huks had gained control over a considerable portion of
Luzon, and Quirino appointed the able Ramon Magsaysay as secretary of national defense to suppress
the insurrection.

Quirino’s six years as president were marked by notable postwar reconstruction, general economic gains,
and increased economic aid from the United States. Basic social problems, however, particularly in the
rural areas, remained unsolved; Quirino’s administration was tainted by widespread graft and corruption.
The 1949 elections, which he had won, were among the most dishonest in the country’s history.
Magsaysay, who had been largely successful in eliminating the threat of the Huk insurgents, broke with
Quirino on the issue of corruption, campaigning for clean elections and defeating Quirino as the
Nacionalista candidate in the presidential election of 1953. Subsequently, Quirino retired to private life.

Ramon Magsaysay

Ramon Magsaysay, (born Aug. 31, 1907, Iba, Phil.—died March 17, 1957, near Cebu), president of the
Philippines (1953–57), best known for successfully defeating the communist-led Hukbalahap (Huk)
movement.

The son of an artisan, Magsaysay was a schoolteacher in the provincial town of Iba on the island of
Luzon. Though most Philippine political leaders were of Spanish descent, Magsaysay was of Malay stock,
like most of the common people. Working his way through José Rizal College near Manila, he obtained a
commercial degree in 1933 and became general manager of a Manila transportation company. After
serving as a guerrilla leader on Luzon during World War II, he was appointed military governor of his
home province, Zambales, when the United States recaptured the Philippines. He served two terms
(1946–50) as a Liberal Party congressman for Zambales, his first experience in politics.

President Elpidio Quirino appointed Magsaysay secretary of defense to deal with the threat of the Huks,
whose leader, Luis Taruc, in February 1950 established a People’s Liberation Army and called for the
overthrow of the government. Magsaysay then carried out until 1953 one of the most successful
antiguerrilla campaigns in modern history. Realizing that the Huks could not survive without popular
support, he strove to win the trust of the peasants by offering land and tools to those who came over to
the government side and by insisting that army units treat the people with respect. Reforming the army,
he dismissed corrupt and incompetent officers and emphasized mobility and flexibility in combat
operations against the guerrillas. By 1953 the Huks were no longer a serious threat, but Magsaysay’s
radical measures had made many enemies for him within the government, compelling him to resign on
February 28, when he charged the Quirino administration with corruption and incompetence.

Although Magsaysay was a Liberal, the Nacionalista Party successfully backed him for the presidency
against Quirino in the 1953 elections, winning the support of Carlos P. Romulo, who had organized a
third party. Magsaysay promised reform in every segment of Philippine life, but he was frustrated in his
efforts by a conservative congress that represented the interests of the wealthy. Despite initial support
of Congress in July 1955, Magsaysay was unable to pass effective land-reform legislation; government
indifference to the plight of the peasants then undid most of his good work in gaining the support of the
people against the Huks. Nevertheless, he remained extremely popular and had a well-deserved
reputation for incorruptibility.

In foreign policy, Magsaysay remained a close friend and supporter of the United States and a vocal
spokesman against communism during the Cold War. He made the Philippines a member of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which was established in Manila on Sept. 8, 1954. Before the
expiration of his term as president, Magsaysay was killed in an airplane crash; he was succeeded by the
vice president, Carlos P. Garcia.

Carlos P. Garcia

Carlos P. Garcia, in full Carlos Polestico Garcia, (born November 4, 1896, Talibon, Philippines—died June
14, 1971, Quezon City), fourth president of the Republic of the Philippines. After graduating from law
school in 1923, he became, successively, a schoolteacher, representative in the Philippine Congress,
governor of his province (Bohol), and then (1941–53) senator. During the Japanese occupation of the
Philippines in World War II, Garcia was active in the resistance movement. He was elected vice president
on the ticket of the Nacionalista Party in 1953 and was also minister of foreign affairs (1953–57). He
became president of the Philippines in March 1957, upon the death of Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, and was
elected to a full four-year term the same year. He maintained the strong traditional ties with the United
States and sought closer relations with noncommunist Asian countries. In the election of November
1961 he was defeated by Vice Pres. Diosdado Macapagal.

Diosdado Macapagal

Diosdado Macapagal, (born Sept. 28, 1910, Lubao, Phil.—died April 21, 1997, Makati, Phil.), reformist
president of the Philippines from 1961 to 1965.

After receiving his law degree, Macapagal was admitted to the bar in 1936. During World War II he
practiced law in Manila and aided the anti-Japanese resistance. After the war he worked in a law firm
and in 1948 served as second secretary to the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. The following year
he was elected to a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives, serving until 1956. During this time
he was Philippine representative to the United Nations General Assembly three times. From 1957 to
1961 Macapagal was a member of the Liberal Party and vice president under Nacionalista president
Carlos Garcia. In the 1961 elections, however, he ran against Garcia, forging a coalition of the Liberal and
Progressive parties and making a crusade against political corruption a principal element of his platform.
He was elected by a wide margin.

While president, Macapagal worked to suppress graft and corruption and to stimulate the Philippine
economy. He placed the peso on the free currency-exchange market, encouraged exports, passed the
country’s first land-reform legislation, and sought to curb income tax evasion, particularly by the
wealthiest families, which cost the treasury millions of pesos yearly. His reforms, however, were crippled
by a House of Representatives and Senate dominated by the Nacionalistas, and he was defeated in the
1965 presidential elections by Ferdinand Marcos.

In 1972 he chaired the convention that drafted the 1973 constitution, but in 1981 he questioned the
validity of its ratification. In 1979 he organized the National Union for Liberation as an opposition party
to the Marcos regime.

Ferdinand Marcos

Ferdinand Marcos, in full Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, (born September 11, 1917, Sarrat, Philippines—died
September 28, 1989, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.), Philippine lawyer and politician who, as head of state from
1966 to 1986, established an authoritarian regime in the Philippines that came under criticism for
corruption and for its suppression of democratic processes.

Marcos attended school in Manila and studied law in the late 1930s at the University of the Philippines,
near that city. Tried for the assassination in 1933 of a political opponent of his politician father, Marcos
was found guilty in November 1939. But he argued his case on appeal to the Philippine Supreme Court
and won acquittal a year later. He became a trial lawyer in Manila. During World War II he was an officer
with the Philippine armed forces. Marcos’s later claims of having been a leader in the Filipino guerrilla
resistance movement were a central factor in his political success, but U.S. government archives revealed
that he actually played little or no part in anti-Japanese activities during 1942–45.

From 1946 to 1947 Marcos was a technical assistant to Manuel Roxas, the first president of the
independent Philippine republic. He was a member of the House of Representatives (1949–59) and of
the Senate (1959–65), serving as Senate president (1963–65). In 1965 Marcos, who was a prominent
member of the Liberal Party founded by Roxas, broke with it after failing to get his party’s nomination for
president. He then ran as the Nationalist Party candidate for president against the Liberal president,
Diosdado Macapagal. The campaign was expensive and bitter. Marcos won and was inaugurated as
president on December 30, 1965. In 1969 he was reelected, becoming the first Philippine president to
serve a second term. During his first term he had made progress in agriculture, industry, and education.
Yet his administration was troubled by increasing student demonstrations and violent urban guerrilla
activities.

On September 21, 1972, Marcos imposed martial law on the Philippines. Holding that communist and
subversive forces had precipitated the crisis, he acted swiftly; opposition politicians were jailed, and the
armed forces became an arm of the regime. Opposed by political leaders—notably Benigno Aquino, Jr.,
who was jailed and held in detention for almost eight years—Marcos was also criticized by church
leaders and others. In the provinces Maoist communists (New People’s Army) and Muslim separatists
(notably of the Moro National Liberation Front) undertook guerrilla activities intended to bring down the
central government. Under martial law the president assumed extraordinary powers, including the
ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Marcos announced the end of martial law in January 1981,
but he continued to rule in an authoritarian fashion under various constitutional formats. He won
election to the newly created post of president against token opposition in June 1981.

Philippine and U.S. dignitaries—(from left to right) Philippine Foreign Minister Carlos P. Romulo, U.S.
Ambassador Richard W. Murphy, Philippine Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and U.S.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David C. Jones—attending a ceremony at Clark Air Base in central
Luzon, Philippines, 1979.

Philippine and U.S. dignitaries—(from left to right) Philippine Foreign Minister Carlos P. Romulo, U.S.
Ambassador Richard W. Murphy, Philippine Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and U.S.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David C. Jones—attending a ceremony at Clark Air Base in central
Luzon, Philippines, 1979.

Marcos’s wife from 1954 was Imelda Romuáldez Marcos, a former beauty queen. Imelda became a
powerful figure after the institution of martial law in 1972. She was often criticized for her appointments
of relatives to lucrative governmental and industrial positions while she held the posts of governor of
Metropolitan Manila (1975–86) and minister of human settlements and ecology (1979–86).

Marcos’s later years in power were marred by rampant government corruption, economic stagnation,
the steady widening of economic inequalities between the rich and the poor, and the steady growth of a
communist guerrilla insurgency active in the rural areas of the Philippines’ innumerable islands.

By 1983 Marcos’s health was beginning to fail, and opposition to his rule was growing. Hoping to present
an alternative to both Marcos and the increasingly powerful New People’s Army, Benigno Aquino, Jr.,
returned to Manila on August 21, 1983, only to be shot dead as he stepped off the airplane. The
assassination was seen as the work of the government and touched off massive antigovernment
protests. An independent commission appointed by Marcos concluded in 1984 that high military officers
were responsible for Aquino’s assassination. To reassert his mandate, Marcos called for presidential
elections to be held in 1986. But a formidable political opponent soon emerged in Aquino’s widow,
Corazon Aquino, who became the presidential candidate of the opposition. It was widely asserted that
Marcos managed to defeat Aquino and retain the presidency in the election of February 7, 1986, only
through massive voting fraud on the part of his supporters. Deeply discredited at home and abroad by
his dubious electoral victory, Marcos held fast to his presidency as the Philippine military split between
supporters of his and of Aquino’s legitimate right to the presidency. A tense standoff that ensued
between the two sides ended only when Marcos fled the country on February 25, 1986, at U.S. urging.
He went into exile in Hawaii, where he remained until his death.

Evidence emerged that during his years in power Marcos, his family, and his close associates had looted
the Philippines’ economy of billions of dollars through embezzlements and other corrupt practices.
Marcos and his wife were subsequently indicted by the U.S. government on racketeering charges, but in
1990 (after Marcos’s death) Imelda was acquitted of all charges by a federal court. She was allowed to
return to the Philippines in 1991, and in 1993 a Philippine court found her guilty of corruption (the
conviction was overturned in 1998)..