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.

ELPIDIO QUIRINO

Quirino, Elpidio (1890-1956), president of the Philippines (1948-1953). He was born in Vignan on Luzon, studied law,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.

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. (see also Index: Hukbalahap Rebellion)

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.

MANUEL ROXAS

Roxas y Acuña, Manuel (1892-1948), Philippine statesman and first president (1946-1948) of the Philippines, born in Capiz, and educated at the University of Manila. 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. (see also Index: Hukbalahap Rebellion)

JOSE P. LAUREL

Jose Paciano Laurel (b. March 9, 1891, Tanauan, Luzon, Phil.--d. Nov. 6, 1959, Manila), president of the Philippines (1943-45), during the Japanese occupation of World War II.

After receiving law degrees from the University of the Philippines (1915) and from Yale University (1920), he was elected to the Philippine Senate in 1925 and appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1936.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Laurel stayed in Manila after President Manuel Quezon escaped first to Bataan and then to the United States. He offered his services to the Japanese; and because of his criticism of U.S. rule of the Philippines he held a series of high posts in 1942-43, climaxing in his selection as president in 1943. Twice in that year he was shot by Philippine guerrillas but recovered. In July 1946 he was charged with 132 counts of treason but was never brought to trial; he shared in the general amnesty in April 1948.

As the Nationalist Party's nominee for the presidency of the Republic of the Philippines in 1949, he was narrowly defeated by the incumbent president, Elpidio Quirino, nominee of the Liberal Party. Elected to the Senate in 1951, Laurel helped to persuade Ramón Magsaysay, then secretary of defense, to desert the Liberals and join the Nationalists. When Magsaysay became president, Laurel headed an economic mission that in 1955 negotiated an agreement to improve economic relations with the United States. He retired from public life in 1957.

SERGIO OSMEÑA

Osmeña, Sergio (1878-1961), Philippine independence leader and statesman, born on Cebu. Trained as a lawyer, he was elected to the first Philippine assembly, became its speaker (1907-1916), and later served as senator from Cebu. Osmeña headed several missions to the United States to argue for Philippine independence and was instrumental in gaining commonwealth status for the Philippines in 1935. Twice elected vice-president of the commonwealth (1935 and 1941), he became president of the government in exile when President Manuel Quezon died in 1944. He was, however, defeated (1946) in the first elections of an independent Philippines.

He was the founder of the Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista) and president of the Philippines from 1944 to 1946. Osmeña received a law degree from the University of Santo Tomás, Manila, in 1903. He was also editor of a Spanish newspaper, El Nuevo Día, in Cebu City. In 1904 the U.S. colonial administration appointed him governor of the province of Cebu and fiscal (district attorney) for the provinces of Cebu and Negros Oriental. Two years later he was elected governor of Cebu. In 1907 he was elected delegate to the Philippine National Assembly and founded the Nationalist Party, which came to dominate Philippine political life.

Osmeña remained leader of the Nationalists until 1921, when he was succeeded by Manuel Quezon, who had joined him in a coalition. Made speaker of the House of Representatives in 1916, he served until his election to the Senate in 1923. In 1933 he went to Washington, D.C., to secure passage of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting independence bill, but Quezon differed with Osmeña over the bill's provision to retain U.S. military bases after independence. The bill, vetoed by the Philippine Assembly, was superseded by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of March 1934, making the Philippines a commonwealth with a large measure of independence. The following year Osmeña became vice president, with Quezon as president. He remained vice president during the Japanese occupation, when the government was in exile in Washington, D.C. On the death of Quezon in August 1944, Osmeña became president. He served as president until the elections of April 1946, when he was defeated by Manuel Roxas, who became the first president of the independent Republic of the Philippines.

MANUEL L. QUEZON

Quezon y Molina, Manuel Luis (1878-1944), Philippine statesman, born in Baler, and educated at the University of San Tomás.. He cut short his law studies at the University of Santo Tomás in Manila in 1899 to participate in the struggle for independence against the United States, led by Emilio Aguinaldo. After Aguinaldo surrendered in 1901, however, Quezon returned to the university, obtained his degree (1903), and practiced law for a few years. Convinced that the only way to independence was through cooperation with the United States, he ran for governor of Tayabas province in 1905. Once elected, he served for two years before being elected a representative in 1907 to the newly established Philippine Assembly.

In 1909 Quezon was appointed resident commissioner for the Philippines, entitled to speak, but not vote, in the U.S. House of Representatives; during his years in Washington, D.C., he fought vigorously for a speedy grant of independence by the United States. Quezon played a major role in obtaining Congress' passage in 1916 of the Jones Act, which pledged independence for the Philippines without giving a specific date when it would take effect. The act gave the Philippines greater autonomy and provided for the creation of a bicameral national legislature modeled after the U.S. Congress. Quezon resigned as commissioner and returned to Manila to be elected to the newly formed Philippine Senate in 1916; he subsequently served as its president until 1935. In 1922 he gained control of the Nacionalista Party, which had previously been led by his rival Sergio Osmeña.

Quezon fought for passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934), which provided for full independence for the Philippines 10 years after the creation of a constitution and the establishment of a Commonwealth government that would be the forerunner of an independent republic. Quezon was elected president of the newly formulated Commonwealth on Sept. 17, 1935. As president he reorganized the islands' military defense (aided by Gen. Douglas MacArthur as his special adviser), tackled the huge problem of landless peasants in the countryside who still worked as tenants on large estates, promoted the settlement and development of the large southern island of Mindanao, and fought graft and corruption in the government. A new national capital, later known as Quezon City, was built in a suburb of Manila.

Quezon was reelected president in 1941. After Japan invaded and occupied the Philippines in 1942, he went to the United States, where he formed a government in exile, served as a member of the Pacific War Council, signed the declaration of the United Nations against the Fascist nations, and wrote his autobiography, The Good Fight (1946). Quezon died of tuberculosis before full Philippine independence was established.

He began to practise law in 1903 and was elected governor of his native province of Tayabas (now Quezon) two years later. He became a member of the first Philippine assembly in 1906. As resident commissioner to the United States Congress (1909-1916), he worked for Philippine independence. He was elected the first president of the newly formed transitional Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935 and re-elected in 1941. After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II, he escaped to the United States, where he headed the Philippine government in exile until his death. Quezon City and Quezon Province are named after him.

Manuel Luis Quezón y Molina was President of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. Filipino nationalism began to surface at the end of the 19th century, but it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that American policy towards the independence of the islands changed. In 1941 the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established, with Quezon as its first president. A fully independent Republic of the Philippines was proclaimed in 1946.

EMILIO AGUINALDO

Aguinaldo, Emilio (1869-1964), Filipino leader and independence fighter, born near Cavite, Luzon, and educated at the College of San Juan de Letran, Manila. Aguinaldo led a Filipino insurrection against Spanish rule in 1896, and two years later, during the Spanish-American War, he aided the American attack on the Philippine Islands. He was nominated president of the new republic after the Filipino declaration of independence in 1898. As head of the Filipino provisional government in 1899, he resisted American occupation; he continued to lead the struggle against the United States forces until March 1901, when he was captured. In April 1901 he took an oath of allegiance to the United States and retired to private life. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the new interim Filipino commonwealth government in 1935. Aguinaldo was taken into custody in 1945, during World War II, by invading American troops and held on suspicion of collaboration with the enemy during the Japanese occupation. He was subsequently exonerated and appointed to the Council of State in 1950.

Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo led a rebellion against Spanish rule in 1896 and assisted the United States during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He subsequently resisted American occupation of the newly independent republic.

. In August 1896 he was mayor of Cavite Viejo and was the local leader of the Katipunan, a revolutionary society that fought bitterly and successfully against the Spanish. In December 1897 he signed an agreement called the Pact of Biac-na-Bató with the Spanish governor general. He agreed to leave the Philippines and to remain permanently in exile on condition of a substantial financial reward from Spain coupled with the promise of liberal reforms. While in Hong Kong and Singapore he made arrangements with representatives of the American consulates and of Commo. George Dewey to return to the Philippines to assist the United States in the war against Spain.

Aguinaldo returned to the Philippines May 19, 1898, and announced renewal of the struggle with Spain. The Filipinos, who declared their independence of Spain on June 12, 1898, proclaimed a provisional republic, of which Aguinaldo was to become president; and in September a revolutionary assembly met and ratified Filipino independence. However, the Philippines, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, were ceded by Spain to the United States by the Treaty of Paris, Dec. 10, 1898.

Relations between the Americans and the Filipinos were unfriendly and grew steadily worse. On Jan. 23, 1899, the Malolos Constitution, by virtue of which the Philippines was declared a republic and which had been approved by the assembly and by Aguinaldo, was proclaimed. Aguinaldo, who had been president of the provisional government, was elected president.

On the night of February 4 the inevitable conflict between the Americans and Filipinos surrounding Manila was precipitated. Morning found the Filipinos, who had fought bravely, even recklessly, defeated at all points. While the fighting was in progress, Aguinaldo issued a proclamation of war against the United States, which immediately sent reinforcements to the Philippines. The Filipino government fled northward. In November 1899 the Filipinos resorted to guerrilla warfare, with all its devastating features.

After three years of costly fighting the insurrection was finally brought to an end when, in a daring operation led by Gen. Frederick Funston, General Aguinaldo was captured in his secret headquarters at Palanan in northern Luzon on March 23, 1901. Aguinaldo took an oath of allegiance to the United States, was granted a pension from the U.S. government, and retired to private life.

In 1935 when the commonwealth government of the Philippines was established in preparation for independence, Aguinaldo ran for president but was decisively beaten. He returned to private life until the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941. The Japanese used Aguinaldo as an anti-American tool. They caused him to make speeches, to sign articles, and to address a radio appeal to Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Corregidor to surrender in order to spare the flower of Filipino youth.

When the Americans returned, Aguinaldo was arrested and, together with others accused of collaboration with the Japanese, was held for some months in Bilibid Prison until released by presidential amnesty. As a token vindication of his honour, he was appointed by President Elpidio Quirino as a member of the Council of State in 1950. In the later years of his life, he devoted his major attention to veterans' affairs, the promotion of nationalism and democracy in the Philippines, and the improvement of relations between the Philippines and the United States.