Diosdado Pangan Macapagal was the ninth President of the Philippines, serving from 1961 to 1965, and the sixth Vice-President, serving from 1957 to 1961.
Diosdado Macapagal was born on September 28, 1910, in Lubao, Pampanga, the third of four children in a poor family. His father, Urbano Macapagal, was a poet who wrote in the local Pampangan language, and his mother, Romana Pangan Macapagal, was a schoolteacher who taught catechism. He is a distant descendant of Don Juan Macapagal, a prince of Tondo, who was a great-grandson of the last reigning Lakan of the Kingdom of Tondo, Lakan Dula. The family earned extra income by raising pigs and accommodating boarders in their home. Due to his roots in poverty, Macapagal would later become affectionately known as the "Poor boy from Lubao".
Macapagal excelled in his studies at local public schools, graduating valedictorian at Lubao Elementary School, and salutatorian at Pampanga High School. He finished his pre-law course at the University of the Philippines, then enrolled at Philippine Law School in 1932, studying on a scholarship and supporting himself with a part-time job as an accountant. While in law school, he gained prominence as an orator and debater. However, he was forced to quit schooling after two years due to poor health and a lack of money. Returning to Pampanga, he joined boyhood friend Rogelio de la Rosa in producing and starring in Tagalog operettas patterned after classic Spanish zarzuelas. It was during this period that he married his friend's sister, Purita de la Rosa in 1938. He had two children with de la Rosa, Cielo and Arturo. Purita died in 1943. On May 5, 1946 he married Dr. Evangelina Macaraeg, with whom he had two children, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who became President of the Philippines and Diosdado Macapagal, Jr.
After passing the bar examination, Macapagal was invited to join an American law firm as a practicing attorney, a particular honor for a Filipino at the time. He was assigned as a legal assistant to President Manuel L. Quezon in Malacañang Palace. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II, Macapagal continued working in Malacañan Palace as an assistant to President Jose P. Laurel, while secretly aiding the anti-Japanese resistance during the Allied liberation against the Japanese.
In the 1957 general election, the Liberal Party drafted Representative Macapagal to run for Vice President as the running-mate of Jose Yulo, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Macapagal's nomination was particularly boosted by Liberal Party President Eugenio Perez, who insisted that the party's vice presidential nominee have a clean record of integrity and honesty. As the first ever Philippine vice president to be elected from a rival party of the president, Macapagal served out his four-year vice presidential term as a leader of the opposition.
In the 1961 presidential election, Macapagal ran against Garcia's re-election bid, promising an end to corruption and appealing to the electorate as a common man from humble beginnings. He defeated the incumbent president with a 55% to 45% margin. His inauguration as the president of the Philippines took place on December 30, 1961. In his inaugural address, Macapagal promised a socio-economic program anchored on "a return to free and private enterprise", placing economic development in the hands of private entrepreneurs with minimal government interference. Twenty days after the inauguration, exchange controls were lifted and the Philippine peso was allowed to float on the free currency exchange market. First, there was the choice between the democratic and dictatorial systems, the latter prevailing in Communist countries. On this, the choice was easy as Filipinos had long been committed to the democratic method. One of Macapagal's major campaign pledges had been to clean out the government corruption that had proliferated under former President Garcia. Macapagal appealed to nationalist sentiments by shifting the commemoration of Philippine independence day. On May 12, 1962, he signed a proclamation which declared Tuesday, June 12, 1962, as a special public holiday in commemoration of the declaration of independence from Spain on that date in 1898.
Macapagal announced his retirement from politics following his 1965 loss to Marcos. In 1971, he was elected president of the constitutional convention that drafted what became the 1973 constitution. The manner in which the charter was ratified and later modified led him to later question its legitimacy. In 1979, he formed the National Union for Liberation as a political party to oppose the Marcos regime. In his retirement, Macapagal devoted much of his time to reading and writing. He published his presidential memoir, authored several books about government and economics, and wrote a weekly column for the Manila Bulletin newspaper.
Diosdado Macapagal died of heart failure, pneumonia and renal complications at the Makati Medical Center on April 21, 1997. He is buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Comments
Post a Comment