Philippine Presidents

GENERAL EMILIO AGUINALDO (March 22, 1869 - February 6, 1964)

The President of the first Philippine Republic and was the leader of the revolution against Spain and America.  At 17, he was appointed by the Spanish government cabeza de barangay (head of a
government unit), and was later promoted in 1895, to capitan municipal (mayor).  When the Spanish-American Revolution broke out, he led the uprising in Cavite.  In a dispute with Andres Bonifacio, he led his forces against the Spaniards.  At 29, he was elected president.  On December 15, 1897, the Spanish government negotiated the pact of Biak-na-Bato with Aguinaldo who accepted $800,000 to go to Hong Kong.  There, he agreed to an alliance with the Americans to destroy the Spanish navy and army.  He returned to the Philippines to lead the Filipino forces.  After the destruction of the Spanish Navy by Commodore George Dewey, he declared independence on June 12, 1898 in Kawit, Cavite.  However, the Americans refused to recognize the Aguinaldo government and this started the Philippine-American Revolution.  On March 23, 1901, he was captured in Isabela by the Americans.  At 32, he retired his presidency and became a farmer.  He died of coronary thrombosis, at the age of 95.     

MANUEL L. QUEZON (August 19, 1878 - August 1, 1944)

The first president of the Commonwealth who fought for independence in the Philippines from
American rule.  When the Philippine-American Revolution broke out, he was commissioned as a
second lieutenant in the revolutionar army.  Later, he was promoted to captain under General Miguel Mascarado.  He and General Mascarado surrendered to the Americans after Aguinaldo was captured.  In 1903, he returned to Baler, Tayabas (now Quezon) to practice law.  At 27, he was elected governor.  In 1907, he was elected to the Philippine Assembly and became the majority floor leader.  From 1909-1916, he became resident commissioner to Washington D.C.  During his term, he obtained the
passage of the Jones Act in the U.S. Congress, which granted Philippine indepence.  In 1918, he
became the Senate president.  In 1934, he returned to the U.S. as chairman of the Philippine
delegation in negotiations that secured passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which set the date of independence in 1946.  The law provided for a commonwealth government.  He was elected president until the outbreak of World War II.  He moved to the U.S. and died of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake, New York.     

SERGIO OSMENA (September 9, 1878 - October 19, 1961)

He was the second president of the Commonwealth.  He was responsible for the rehabilitation of the Philippine government after the War.  He served on the staff of General Aguinaldo as a courier and a journalist.  In 1900, he started the newspaper El Nuevo Dia, which lasted for three years.  In 1903, after he passed the bar examination, he went to Cebu to serve as legal assistant to the governor.  At 25, he became fiscal officer.  In 1906, he became governor and gave up the position that same year to run for the first National Assembly.  From 1917-1922, he was elected speaker.  From 1923-1935, he served as a senator.  In 1935, he was elected vice-president with Quezon as president.  He succeeded \Quezon upon his death as president.  He retired as a statesman in Cebu.  He died at the age of 82. 

MANUEL A. ROXAS (January 1, 1892 - April 15, 1948)

The last president of the Commonwealth and the first President of the Philippine Republic.  He started as a law clerk of a Supreme Court justice and later became a governor in Capiz.  In 1922, he served as speaker in the National Assembly for eleven years.  He was one of the seven members who drafted the 1935 charter in the Constitutional Convention.  When World War II broke out, he fought in Bataan and was captured by the Japanese.  He was forced to serve the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic.  After the war, he was branded a collaborator together with President Jose Laurel and his whole
cabinet.  He was also a secret supporter of the guerilla movement and the Filipinos exonerated him in 1946.  He had served only two years when he died of a heart attack, while delivering a speech at Clark Air Force Base.

JOSE P. LAUREL  (March 9, 1891 - November 6, 1959)

He was President of the second Philippine Republic.  Pepito, as he was known as a boy, enrolled in Manila South High School, in Intramuros.  He was indicted for killing the rival suitor of his girlfriend (later he studied law and won aquittal).  Finished his secondary education and married Prudencia
Hidalgo in 1911.  He received LL.B. from the University of the Philippines in 1915; L.J. from Escuela de Derecho, 1919; and D.C.L. from Yale University, U.S.A., 1920.  He was appointed chief clerk of the former Executive Bureau, 1919 and Undersecretary and then Secretary of the Interior, 1922.  In 1923, he resigned, along with others, in protest against U.S. Governor-General Leonard Wood.  He was
appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1934.  In 1938, he received LL.D. from Tokyo
International University.  In June 1943, he was alsmost assassinated while he was playing golf.  In
October 4, 1943, he became president of the Japanese puppet government.  During the next election, he lost to Elpidio Quirino and was returned to the Senate.

ELPIDIO QUIRINO (November 16, 1890 - February 29, 1956)

The second president of the Republic.  He was famous for his socio-economic measures such as the Minimum Wage law and the institution of the Central Bank.  In 1925, he was elected to the Senate.  As a senator, he pushed for legislation on taxation and tariffs.  In 1945, he was chosen Senate president pro tempore.  In 1946, he became vice-president and secretary of foreign affairs.  He assumed
presidency when Roxas died.  On November 8, 1949, he was elected president in his own right. 
During his term, the economic conditions improved.  He succeeded in stabilizing the Philippine peso and balancing the national budget.  At 66, he died in Novaliches, Quezon City.   

RAMON MAGSAYSAY (August 31, 1907 - March 17, 1957)

The third president of the Republic.  Most popular of all Philippine Presidents, he was very close to the people and instituted many social reforms.  During the Japanese invation, he was a guerilla fighter in Zambales.  After the liberation, General Douglas MacArthur promoted him to major.  In 1946 and 1949, he was elected twice as a representative in Zambales.  In 1950, he was appointed the secretary of national defense.  In 1953, he won by a landslide for presidency.  He opened the Malacanang Palace to the people.  He was instrumental in acquiring land settlements for the people, lowering the price of consumer goods, and breaking up the big landed estates.  At 50, he died in a plane crash on Mount Manunggal in Cebu.

CARLOS P. GARCIA (November 4, 1896 - June 14, 1971)

The fourth president of the Republic.  In 1925, he ran for Congress and won.  In 1931, he was elected governor of Bohol.  He fought the Japanese as a guerilla, and when the country was liberated in 1945, he ran for senator and was elected for eight years.  He became vice-president and was appointed secretary of foreign affairs in 1953.  He became president when Magsaysay died, and in subsequent national elections, he won the presidency.  He was famous for his First Filipino Policy and Austerity Program, which put the interests of Filipinos above those of foreigners and of the ruling party.  In 1971, he served as president of the Constitutional Convention called by Ferdinand Marcos.  He died of a heart attack in Manila.      

DIOSDADO MACAPAGAL (September 10, 1910 -              )

The fifth president of the Republic.  He began his Five Year Socio-Economic Programby removing the Import Control.  He served in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and was head of a panel, which
negotiatied the transfer of the Turtle islands from Great Britain to the Philippines.  He was elected in 1949, then reelected in 1953 for Congress.  During his term, he sponsored the passage of laws
benefitting the farmers, which earned him the title "Best Lawmaker" for 1954-1957.  In 1958, he was elected vice-president and served under Carlos Garcia.  In 1961, he won the presidency.  He was
famous for his Nationalization of Retail and the Land Reform Bill, which freed many farmers from
slavery as tenant farmers.  During his term, he declared June 12 sa the national independence day in honor of General Emilio Aguinaldo's declaration of freedom from Spain in 1898.   

FERDINAND E. MARCOS (September 11, 1917 - September 28, 1989)

The sixth president of the Republic.  He fought with the guerillas during World War II.  After liberation, he served as a technical assistant to Roxas (1946-47); member of the House of Representatives (1949-59); member of the Senate (1959-65); and Senate president (1963-65).  In 1965, he became president and was reelected in 1969, the first Philippine president to serve a second term.  During his second term, he signed Proclamation 1081 declaring Martial Law on September 21, 1972 that claimed communists and other forces caused the deterioration of law and order in the country.  The army made mass arrests of policital enimies and imprisoned thousands without due process.  A
parliamentary form of government was ratified making Marcos president and prime minister with vast powers and extending his rule indefinitely.  On January 17, 1981, hundreds of political prisoners were released when the Martial law was lifted.  However, the economic conditions of the Philippines worsened and rampant graft and corruption were committed by his cronies.  Student activism and violent demonstrations mounted in 1983, while the New Peoples Army continued their depredations in the countryside.  In 1986, he lost the presidency to Corazon Aquino.  He fled with his family and 60 followers to exile in Honolulu, where he died three years later.

CORAZON C. AQUINO (January 25, 1933 -        )

She is the seventh and the first woman president of the Philippines.  She was catapulted to the
presidency through "People Power" after the assassination of her husband Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983.  In the 1986 "snap" presidential elections, Marcos was declared the winner by the government "Commission on Elections" in a delayed count, but Aquino led earlier in the tally of the National
Citizens Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL).  A stalemate in the proclamation of a winner
followed.  Aquino led a nationwide protest against the election fraud.  The stalemate was broken when Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Vice Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces General
Fidel Ramos supported her.  Hundreds of thousands of people rallied to the side of the mutineers and faced the guns and tanks of the administration.  The EDSA revolution stopped the government troops from crushing the Ramos-Enrile fraction.  Aquino was president from 1986-1992.  Her term was punctuated by six coup attempts, domestic insurgency, disagreements with the U.S. over military bases, and foreign debts.  She formed a transition government, and she was restored democracy to the Philippines.   

FIDEL VALDEZ RAMOS (July 1, 1992 -              )

He was the former Vice Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines of Marcos' Regime.  He was also the former Secretary of Defense under Aquino and now the eighth president of the Republic.  He aims to transform the Philippines from the economic laggard of Southeast Asia into one of the
region's new tiger.

JOSEPH E. ESTRADA  a. k. a. ERAP (April 19, 1937 -              )

He is the ninth president of the Republic.  He was born in Tondo, Manila.  His parents moved to San Juan where he grew up.  He studied at the Ateneo de Manila University and the Mapua Institute of Technology.  He became a movie actor in his early twenties and has since established himself as a living legend in local filmdom.  He was elected mayor of the Municipality of San Juan in 1967 and got reelected.  He served there for about 16 continuous years.  In 1987, he was elected as senator.  In the Senate, he was credited with the passage of, among other major pieces of legislation, the bills on irrigation project and protection and propagation of carabaos.  He won as Vice President of the Philippines in 1992, and at the same time, served as chairman of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC).  Estrada is married to the former Dr. Luisa Pimentel with whom he has three children.
 

**** Faced serious corruptions allegations from office and ousted last January 2001****

GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO (APRIL 5, 1947             )

Current  President of the Philippines. Assumed presidency in January 20, 2001.