Gloria Arroyo

Republic of the Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo visits Kingdom of Bahrain
Gloria Arroyo is the 14th and current president of the Philippines. The second female president of the country, Arroyo is the daughter of former president, Diosdado Macapagal. Prior to entering politics in 1987, Arroyo was a professor of economics. Arroyo first took the position of president amid revolts and protests and this turmoil has come to characterize both of her terms in office. As president, Arroyo has focused on the economy and, through the implementation of a series of "holiday economics" polices, has lowered inflation rates to a recent low and garnered praise from international observers. Arroyo is a strong supported of United States foreign policy, including the Iraq War and War on Terror. She has also tried to improve regional relations as represented in the Cebu City hosting of the ASEAN Summit in 2007.

JOSEPH ESTRADA

Estrada, Joseph (1935- ), Filipino film actor and director, later politician and Vice-President (1992-1998) and President (1998- ) of the Philippines. Born in Manila, Estrada dropped out of college to start a career in films at the age of 21. Since then he has made over 120 films, many of them in the action-comedy genre in which he played heroes drawn from the lower levels of society. He won several of the highest Philippine awards for direction and acting. His political career began in 1969 when he was elected mayor of the municipality of San Juan in Metro Manila. There he devoted himself to tackling crime and served as mayor for 17 years. In 1987 he was elected to the Philippine senate. Although criticized for inactivity during his period in the senate, Estrada was among the leading advocates of a termination of the lease on United States military bases in the Philippines. His popularity as an actor contributed to his convincing win in the vice-presidential election in 1992, even though he was running on a different ticket to that of the winning president, Fidel Ramos. As Vice-President, Estrada headed an anti-crime commission that carried over the tactics of his film roles into real life. He won the May 1998 presidential elections convincingly on a populist platform, taking power from his former superior President Ramos. Besides his involvement in politics and acting, Estrada has been active in charitable work and in founding the Movie Workers' Foundation to assist the development of the film industry in the Philippines.

Filipino film actor and director Joseph Estrada was elected Vice-President of the Philippines in 1992 and President in 1998. These were not his first political appointments: he was Mayor of San Juan in Manila for 17 years, and has also sat in the senate.

FIDEL V. RAMOS

Ramos, Fidel Valdez (1928- ), Filipino soldier and politician, President from 1992 to 1998, and one of the leaders of the 1986 EDSA revolution in the Philippines that drove President Ferdinand Marcos from power. Fidel “Eddie” Ramos was the son of a diplomat and legislator who served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. After winning a government scholarship to the United States Military Academy at West Point and studying engineering at the University of Illinois, he saw active service in the Korean War and was Chief of Staff (1966-1968) to the Philippine Civil Action Group in Vietnam.

His service to the state continued through the Marcos years, during which he headed the Philippine Constabulary (now the Philippine National Police) and served as Vice-Chief of Staff of the armed forces for five years. Ramos was also identified as one of the “Rolex Twelve”, the group of close associates of the president. However, he switched sides in the struggle for power in February 1986, aligning himself with Corazon Aquino and the “People Power” movement against Marcos. He and Juan Ponce Enrile led the resistance to Marcos centred on two military camps. He was rewarded with promotion to Chief of Staff and then, in January 1988, with the post of Defence Minister in Aquino’s government. He increased his popularity during these years by helping to defeat a series of coup attempts against Aquino.

Aquino nominated Ramos as her choice for President in the 1992 elections. Ramos won a narrow victory to become the 12th president of the Philippine Republic. His immediate priorities were to deal with the energy crisis and the economy; he tackled economic problems through policies of fiscal transparency and deregulation, as well as less popular methods such as extending value added tax. Ramos also sought to end insurgencies by Communist and Muslim rebels, and formed a National Unification Commission in August 1992 to oversee this. In the same month he gave permission for the return of Ferdinand Marcos’s remains to the Philippines. Legislative elections held in June 1995 that were presented by Ramos as a referendum on his administration led to overwhelming victory for his supporters; by this time, his policies had reformed the Philippine economy and lifted its growth rate closer to that of other Pacific Rim “tiger economies”. In October he took personal charge of the government’s campaign against organized crime. The withdrawal of the Lakas ng Edsa party from the ruling coalition weakened Ramos’s support, but he was still able to put through an important economic liberalization package in March 1996. In September the government concluded a landmark agreement with the Muslim secessionist Moro National Liberation Front in Mindanao, ending the long-term insurgency there. Congressional opposition to suspected moves by Ramos to amend the constitution, allowing him to stand for a second term in 1998, led to the ousting in October 1996 of the Senate president Neptali Gonzales, a firm Ramos supporter.

In March 1997 the Philippines Supreme Court rejected a campaign by Ramos supporters to allow a second presidential term, confirming its decision in June. In September 1997 a mass rally in Manila, attended by Cardinal Jaime Sin and Corazon Aquino among others, demonstrated against all efforts to change the constitution to allow Ramos a second term. In December, Ramos duly endorsed his chosen presidential candidate. However, the presidential elections in May 1998 were won by Ramos’s former vice-president, Joseph Estrada.

Endorsed by the outgoing president Corazon Aquino, former defence minister Fidel Ramos narrowly won the 1992 presidential elections in the Philippines. His government successfully enacted economic liberalization measures, invigorating the Philippines’ economy. He also negotiated a peace treaty with the Muslim rebel group in Mindanao, ending a long-standing uprising there.

CORAZON C. AQUINO

Aquino, Corazon (1933- ), Philippine political figure and President of the Philippines (1986-1992).

Corazon (Cory), born Corazon Cojuanco, was the daughter of a wealthy landed family and was educated in Manila and at Roman Catholic convent schools in the United States. She graduated from Mount St Vincent College in New York and studied law at Far Eastern University in Manila. She married Benigno Simeon Aquino (Ninoy) in 1954.

She moved with her husband to the United States following his release from prison in 1980. After his assassination at Manila Airport in 1983, Corazon went to the Philippines for her husband’s funeral and stayed to work in the legislative election campaign. The opposition won one-third of the seats in 1984. Marcos called presidential elections for February 1986, and she became the opposition candidate for president. Marcos, declaring himself victor in the February 7 election, was inaugurated on February 25. An army revolt under Fidel Ramos and others, and demonstrations on her behalf, led to Aquino’s inauguration on the same day, in the so-called EDSA Revolution. Marcos accepted asylum in the United States, while Aquino formed a provisional government. She implemented a new constitution ratified by a landslide popular vote, and held legislative elections in 1987, but opposition within the military, a continuing Communist insurgency, and severe economic problems plagued her presidency. She declined to run for a second term in 1992, yielding the presidency to her favoured candidate Ramos. In 1995 she ran a “Never Again” campaign during national elections to prevent the election of Marcos’s son, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., and the former army colonel and coup plotter Gregorio Honasan. In 1996 she campaigned to prevent President Ramos from changing the constitution to permit a second presidential term.

Aquino became President and won the enactment of a new constitution in February 1987. Although she won a vote of confidence in legislative elections that May, military unrest, coupled with popular discontent at the slow pace of economic reform, continued to threaten her government. US Air Force jets assisted Philippine government forces in suppressing a coup attempt in December 1989. In 1991 damage from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in central Luzon led the United States to abandon nearby Clark Air Base; the Philippine senate then refused to renew the lease on the lone remaining US base, Subic Bay Naval Station, which the United States closed in November 1992. Aquino declined to run in the May 1992 presidential election; instead, she endorsed the eventual winner, her former Defence Secretary, Fidel Valdez Ramos.

Corazon Aquino became the first woman president of the Philippines in 1986 when she defeated Ferdinand E. Marcos. After she became president, she abolished the National Assembly and replaced the constitution with a new one that was adopted by popular vote in 1987. She had been married to Benigno Aquino, who was assassinated in 1983.

Diosdado Macapagal

Diosdado Macapagal(b. Sept. 28, 1910, Lubao, Phil.), Filipino reformist president of the Republic 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 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, 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 elections by Ferdinand Marcos.

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

CARLOS P. GARCIA

Carlos P. Garcia (b. Nov. 4, 1896, Talibon, Phil.--d. 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 non-Communist Asian countries. In the election of November 1961 he was defeated by Vice Pres. Diosdado Macapagal.

RAMON MAGSAYSAY (1907-1957)

Magsaysay, Ramón (1907-1957), Philippine statesman, born in Iba, and educated at the University of the Philippines and José Rizal College. From 1942 to 1945, during World War II, he organized and led the guerrilla force that fought the Japanese. He was elected (1946) and re-elected (1949) on the Liberal party ticket to the Philippine House of Representatives. An advocate of stronger government action against the Communist-led Hukbalahap (Huk) guerrillas, he was appointed secretary of national defence in 1950. He reorganized and strengthened the army and the constabulary and intensified the campaign to crush Huk resistance, waging one of the most successful antiguerrilla campaigns in modern history by winning over the peasantry and preserving tight military discipline. In 1953 Magsaysay resigned his post as defence secretary and became the presidential candidate of the Nationalist party after criticizing the Liberal government. He was elected president of the Philippines in November 1953, but his efforts to reform the country were frustrated by wealthy landowner interests in the national congress. He died in a plane crash.

In 1953 the government attempted unsuccessfully to end the Huk rebellion by a peace parley with the rebel leaders. In the presidential elections, held on November 10, former Defence Minister Ramón Magsaysay won a decisive victory over the incumbent Quirino, and because of his vigorous conduct of the campaign against the Huks, the back of the rebellion was broken, although it was not entirely suppressed.

Congress approved, on August 11, 1955, legislation empowering President Magsaysay to break up large landed estates and distribute the land to tenant farmers. On September 6 the Philippines and the United States concluded a trade agreement on private US investment in Philippine enterprises.

In the mid-1950s the United States and the Philippines jointly acknowledged Philippine ownership of US military bases in the islands. The Philippine Senate also ratified the peace treaty with Japan and a Philippine-Japanese agreement providing for US$800 million in Japanese reparations.

Magsaysay died on March 17, 1957, in an air crash, and the next day Vice-President Carlos P. Garcia was sworn in as President. In June a statute outlawing the Communist Party was promulgated. The statute provided a maximum sentence of death for active party membership but allowed surrender without penalty within 30 days after promulgation. Some 1,400 holdouts of the Huk movement surrendered. Garcia was subsequently elected president, and Diosdado Macapagal, an opposition Liberal Party candidate, was elected Vice-President. Macapagal was elected President in 1961, but in the elections of 1965 he lost to the Nationalist candidate, Ferdinand Marcos.

Magsaysay was elected president of the Philippines in 1953 and served four years in office. Magsaysay was a strong opponent of the Communist-led Huk guerrillas, and he reorganized and strengthened the armed forces in a campaign to crush them. He was killed in a plane crash in 1957.