Diosdado Macapagal

"The strength of the nation lies in the well-being of the common man."

Born: September 28, 1910
Died: April 21, 1997
Position in History: Philippines: 9th President, Third Republic: 5th President
Presidential Term: December 30, 1961 - December 30, 1965
Duration of Term: 1461 days

Diosdado Macapagal was born in Barrio San Nicolas, Lubao, Pampanga to Urbano Macapagal and Romana Pangan. Despite extreme poverty, Macapagal pursued his studies. He was known as the poor boy from Lubao. Macapagal took up law at the Philippine Law school but transferred to the University of Santo Tomas two years later. After obtaining his degree, Macapagal was admitted to the bar in 1936. He entered into private law practice and taught law on the side in Manila. In 1940, Macapagal became Manuel Quezon's legal assistant.

During the Japanese occupation in the war, Macapagal continued to practice law but he also aided the anti-Japanese resistance movements and also served as intelligence liaison with guerrillas units. Macapagal barely survived the liberation of the Philippines and Purita de la Rosa, his first wife, died of malnutrition. He eventually married again to Evangelina Macaraeg. In 1948, President Quirino appointed Macapagal second secretary to the Philippine Embassy in Washington. A year later, Quirino asked him to run against a Huk candidate as a Pampanga representative. Macapagal won and was elected to the Philippine House of Representatives. He was re-elected in 1953. Macapagal also served as the Philippine representative to the United Nations General Assembly three times.

Macapagal was a member of the Liberal Party and was elected vice-president in 1957 under President Garcia who was a member of the Nacionalista Party. In the 1961 presidential elections, Macapagal defeated the other four candidates with 55% of the votes. During his term, Macapagal fought to suppress graft and corruption within the government and also tax evasion. He also aimed to stimulate the economy and placed the peso in the free currency-exchange market, encouraging the wealthiest families to invest.

Macapagal also passed the Land Reform Bill which freed many farmers from slavery as tenant farmers. Another of his achievements was the forming of Maphilindo (Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia) through a foreign policy. This paved the way for the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Although Macapagal's efforts were aimed to help the common people, a number his reforms were blocked by the Nacionalista dominated Senate and House of Representatives. It was Macapagal who changed the Independence Day to June 12 from July 4. The first celebrations commemorating independence from Spain were held in 1962.

Originally, Macapagal had an agreement with Ferdinand Marcos also of the Liberal Party. Macapagal would not run again for the presidency but instead back Marcos as the Liberal candidate. Despite this agreement, Macapagal ran in the 1965 presidential elections but was defeated by Marcos. At the end of Macapagal's presidency, agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) was at its highest, inflation was at its lowest and trade deficit was negligible. Foreign debts were less than US$600 million and Philippine economic development was right behind that of Japan in Asia.

In 1971, upon former President Carlos Garcia's death, Macapagal was chosen as president of the 1971 Constitutional Convention. He became an outspoken critic of the Marcos administration. In 1972, Macapagal was one of the first to strongly oppose imposition of martial law. In the early years of martial law, he published the first anti-Marcos dictatorship book Democracy in the Philippines for which he was later prosecuted for sedition. In 1979, Macapagal organised the National Union for Liberation as an opposition party to Marcos.

Diosdado Macapagal died on April 21, 1997, due to heart failure, pneumonia and renal complications at the Makati Medical Centre.

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