DIOSDADO MACAPAGAL

DIOSDADO MACAPAGAL (1910-  ), The Ninth President of the Republic of the Philippines

TERM OF OFFICE: December 30, 1961 – December 30, 1965

diosdado-macapagal1

PERSONAL DATA

  • Date of Birth: September 28, 1910
  • Place of Birth: Lubao, Pampanga
  • Father: Urbano Macapagal
  • Mother: Romana Pangan
  • First wife: Purita de la Rosa
  • Second Wife: Dra. Evangelina Macaraeg
  • Children by Purita de la Rosa: Cielo and Arthur
  • Children by Dra. Evangelina Macaraeg: Diosdado, Jr. and Gloria
  • Date of Death: April 21,1997
  • Place of Death: Makati
  • Cause of Death: Heart disease, severe colds and kidney trouble.
  • Age at Death: 87

EDUCATION

Elementary and High School

  • Mababang Paaralan ng Lubao (1925)
  • Mataas na Paaralan ng Pampanga (1929)

College

  • Associate of Arts, University of the Philippines
  • Scholar, Philippine Law School,
  • Bachelor of Law, University of Sto. Tomas (1936)
  • Master of Laws, (1941)
  • Doctor of Public Laws, (1947)
  • Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (1957)

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.