We Filipinos should be thankful for we had heroes that fought for sovereignty and freedom.

During the Spanish regime, brave heroes like Apolinario Mabini, Ladislao Diwa, Teodoro Plata, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Andres Bonifacio and Melchora Aquino did a change...

Apolinario Mabini Maranan (July 23, 1864 May 13, 1903) was a Filipino political philosopher and revolutionary who wrote the constitution for the first Philippine republic of 1899-1901, and served as its first prime minister in 1899. In Philippine history texts, he is often referred to as "the Sublime Paralytic", and as "the Brains of the Revolution." To his enemies and detractors, he is referred to as the "Dark Chamber of the President."

Ladislao Diwa Nocon (June 27, 1863March 12, 1930) was a Filipino patriot who was among the founders of the Katipunan that initiated the Philippine Revolution against Spain in 1896.

Teodoro Plata (died February 6, 1897) was a Filipino patriot, and a co-founder of the Katipunan, the secret society which sparked the Philippine Revolution against Spanish rule in 1896. He met Andrs Bonifacio at a boarding house in Manila along with Ladislao Diwa who was then a law student at the University of Santo Tomas. Bonifacio, Diwa and Plata were all freemasons who were inspired by the nationalistic objectives of the Propaganda Movement in Europe.

Marcelo Hilario del Pilar Gatmaitan (August 30, 1850 July 4, 1896), was a Filipino writer, revolutionary leader of Philippine Revolution and one of the the leading Ilustrado (Knowledgeable) propagandist of the Philippine War of Independence. Del Pilar was one of the co-publisher and founder of La Solidaridad (The Solidarity), which helped crystallize nationalist sentiments and ignite libertarian ideas. He tried to marshal the nationalist sentiment of the enlightened Filipino ilustrados, against the Spanish imperialism. He wrote articles and pamphlets against the excesses of Spanish friars in the Philippines.

Andres Bonifacio de Castro (November 30, 1863 May 10, 1897) was a Filipino nationalist and revolutionary. He was a founder and leader of theKatipunan movement which sought the independence of the Philippines from Spanish colonial rule and started the Philippine Revolution. He is considered a de facto national hero of the Philippines. Bonifacio is also considered by some Filipino historians to be the first president of the Philippines, but he is not officially recognized as such.

Melchora Aquino de Ramos (January 6, 1812 March 2, 1919) was a Filipino revolutionary who became known as "Tandang Sora" in the history of the Philippines because of her age when the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896 (she was already 84 at the time). She gained the title Grand Woman of the revolution and the Mother of Balintawak for her heroic contributions to Philippine history.

Emilio Aguinaldo Manuel L. Quezon Jose P. Laurel Sergio Osmena Manuel A. Roxas Elpidio Quirino Ramon Magsaysay

Carlos P. Garcia Diosdado Macapagal Ferdinand Marcos Corazon Aquino Fidel V. Ramos Joseph Estrada Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

Emilio Aguinaldo Famy[1][2] (March 22, 1869 February 6, 22, general, politician, 1964) 1964) was a Filipino general, politician, and independence leader of Chinese and Spanish descent. He played an instrumental role in descent. Philippine Philippine independence during the Revolution against Spain and the Philippine-American War that Philippineresisted American occupation. He eventually pledged his allegiance occupation. government. to the US government. When war broke out between Spain and the United States in April 1898, Aguinaldo made arrangements with the U.S. consuls in 1898, Hong Kong and Singapore and with Commodore George Dewey to return from exile to fight against Spain. On June 12 Aguinaldo Spain. proclaimed the independence of the Philippine Islands from Spain, hoisted the national flag, introduced a national anthem, and ordered a public reading of the declaration of independence. independence.

When he realized that the United States would not accept immediate and complete independence for the Philippines, he organized a revolution against American rule that resulted in 3 years of bloody guerrilla warfare. He was captured on March 23, 1901, by Gen. Frederick Funston. Funston and several other officers, bound hand and foot, pretended to be prisoners and were taken to Aguinaldo's camp by Filipinos loyal to the United States. Released and given weapons, they easily captured Aguinaldo, who then took an oath of allegiance to the United States and issued a peace proclamation on April 19. The bitterness caused by the war was soon transformed into friendship as Americans and Filipinos joined to work toward Philippine independence. Aguinaldo retired to private life, and his son entered West Point in the same class as Gen. Funston's son.

Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina (August 19, 1878 in Baler, Tayabas, Philippines August 1, 1944 in Saranac Baler, Tayabas, Lake, Lake, New York, United States) was the first York, States) Filipino president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines under U.S. colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century. He is considered by most Filipinos to have been the second President of the Philippines, after Emilio Philippines, Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo. He has the distinction of being the first Senate President elected to the presidency, the first president elected through a national election, and the first incumbent to secure re-election (for a partial second term, later reextended, due to amendments to the 1935 Constitution). He is known as the "Father of the National Language". Language".

He prepared the groundwork for Philippine independence in 1946. Quezon was considered "bright but lazy"; but when he joined the revolutionary forces of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo during the revolution against Spain, Quezon displayed his fearless, bold, and quickquicktempered style of fighting. He was promoted from private to major until, in 1899, he surrendered to the Americans, spent six months in jail, and then returned to Manila. Manila.

Jos Paciano Laurel y Garca (March 9, 1891 November 6, 1959) was the president of the 1959) JapaneseJapanese-Sponsored Republic of the Philippines during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. 1945. After receiving law degrees from the University of the Philippines (1915) and from 1915) Yale University (1920), he was elected to the 1920), Philippine Senate in 1925 and appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1936. 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 Ramn 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 Osmea (September 9, 1878 October 19, 1961) was the second President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. He was Vice President underManuel L. Quezon, and rose to the presidency upon Quezon's death in 1944. He was a founder of Nacionalista Party.

On March 5, 1906, Osmea was elected provincial governor of Cebu at the age of 28. Although he had little political experience, he succeeded in solving the grave problems of public order and community cooperation in his province, cultivating the people's trust in the municipal enforcement officers. In 1902 Osmea had joined those nationalists who petitioned Governor William Howard Taft to allow the formation of a political party advocating immediate independence for the Philippines. In 1906 Osmea became president of the first convention of provincial governors, which urged eventual independence. In 1907 he was unanimously elected speaker of the Assembly, a post he held for 9 years.

Manuel Acua Roxas (January 1, 1892 April 15, 1948) was the first president of the independent Republic of the Philippines. He served as president from the granting of independence in 1946 until his abrupt death in 1948. His term as Philippine president is also the shortest; 1 year 10 months and 18 days.

His administration demonstrated decisively that political sovereignty without economic independence encourages reaction, perpetuation of social injustices, and exploitation. In December 1931 Roxas, together with Senate president pro tempore Sergio Osmea, left for the United States to secure the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act from the U.S. Congress, which would grant Philippine independence after a transition period of 10 years. This bill was rejected by the opposition forces led by Manuel Quezon. In 1934 Roxas was elected to the constitutional convention. In 1938 he was appointed secretary of finance by Commonwealth president Quezon and then became his trusted adviser. In 1941 Roxas ran for the Senate and won.

Elpidio Rivera Quirino (November 16, 1890 February 29, 1956) was a Filipino politician, and the sixth President of the Philippines. After graduating from the College of Law, University of the Philippines, in 1915, Quirino served as law clerk in the Philippine Commission and then as secretary to Senate president Manuel Quezon. In 1919 Quirino won the post of congressional representative from the first district of Ilocos Sur. He opposed Sergio Osmea, the leader of the Nacionalista party, and joined Quezon's Collectivista faction of the party. In 1925 Quirino was elected to the Senate. Quezon appointed him chairman of the Committee on Accounts and Claims and of the Committee on Public Instruction and to other important congressional bodies. In 1931 Quirino was re-elected to the Senate. In the controversy surrounding the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Law of 1933, he sided with Quezon.

In 1934 Quirino became secretary of finance. He was also one of the drafters of the constitution approved on May 15, 1935. When the Philippine Commonwealth was inaugurated on Nov. 15, 1935, he held the position of secretary of finance (1935-1936) and then became secretary of interior (1936-1938). In 1941 he was elected as senator-at-large. When World War II broke out, Quirino refused to join the puppet government of Jos Laurel and became an underground leader of the Filipino resistance movement against the Japanese. He was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese military police in Ft. Santiago, and his wife, two daughters, and a son were murdered by the Japanese forces. In 1945 Quirino became the leader of the majority in the Philippine Congress and then assumed the post of president pro tempore of the Senate. On the inauguration of the Philippine Republic in 1946, he occupied the post of vice president and first secretary of foreign affairs. In 1947 Quirino (who belonged to the class of landlords, compradors, and bureaucrat-capitalists) urged the adoption of the anomalous "parity amendment," imposed by the U.S. government in exchange for independence, war damage payments, and other loans.

Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay (August 31, 1907 - March 17, 1957) was the third President of the Third Republic of the Philippines from December 30, 1953 until his death in a plane crash in 1957. He was elected President under the banner of the Nacionalista Party.

In Congress, Magsaysay served as chairman of the House Committee on National Defense and belonged to numerous other committees. In April 1948 President Manuel Roxas appointed Magsaysay to head a veterans' mission to Washington which lobbied for the passage of the Rogers bill. In 1950 Magsaysay attacked the Liberal party-dominated administration for corruption and called for reforms of the deplorable social conditions which had produced the Hukbalahap rebellion (the rebels were peasants fighting for democratic rights, equality, and justice). Time (Nov. 26, 1951) reported that "when politicians kept him from buying Quonset huts he needed as schoolhouses for Zambales, he gathered some of his wartime guerillas, raided a surplus dump, and made off with 140 huts. Later he paid for them--50 centavos (25 cents) apiece, the price he figured the profiteer who owned them had paid in the first place." Prompted by his American advisers, President Elpidio Quirino appointed Magsaysay secretary of national defense on Sept. 1, 1950.

Carlos Polstico Garca (November 4, 1896 June 14, 1971)was a Filipino teacher, poet, orator, lawyer, public official, and guerrilla leader. He became the 8th President of the Philippines known for his "Filipino First" policy, which put the interests of the Filipino people above those of foreigners and of the ruling party.

Garcia was born in the town of Talibon on the island of Bohol. His father served as mayor of the town for four terms. Garcia earned a law degree from Philippine Law School in 1923 and taught high school for several years after that. Due to his poetic abilities, he was known as the "Bard from Bohol." He entered politics in 1925 as a member of the Nacionalista party and served as congressman of the third district of Bohol until 1931, when he became governor of Bohol. In 1941, he was elected senator, and was re-elected after World War II. He became vice president in 1953. He assumed the presidency when President Ramon Magsaysay died in a plane crash on 17 March 1957. He subsequently won the presidency in his own right in elections of November of that year.

Diosdado Pangan Macapagal (September 28, 1910 April 21, 1997) was the 9th President of the Philippines, serving from 1961 to 1965, and the 6th Vice President of the Philippines, serving from 1957 to 1961. Macapagal graduated from the University of the Philippines and University of Santo Tomas, after which he worked as a lawyer for the government. He first won election in 1949 to the House of Representatives, representing a district in his home province of Pampanga. In 1957 he became vice president in the administration of President Carlos P. Garcia, and in 1961 he defeated Garcia's re-election bid for the presidency.

He worked his way through law school and joined the largest U.S. law firm in Manila while the Philippines was still a U.S. colony. After independence he joined the Department of Foreign Affairs, rising to the position of second secretary of the Philippine embassy in Washington, D.C. While in Washington, Macapagal conducted graduate work in economics, earning a Ph.D. in 1957. He was twice elected to the Philippine Congress, serving from 19491956, and was vice president from 19571961.

Philippine president Ferdinand Edralin Marcos (1917-1989) began his career/ in politics with the murder of Julio Nalundasan in 1935, and ended it with the murder of Benigno Aquino, Jr., in 1983. Some believe his entire life was based on fraud, deceit, and plunder, and his two decades as president have come to epitomize the worst excesses of autocratic rule.

Achievements and Contributions:

Marcos did well in school, as he had an extraordinary memory which allowed him to quickly memorize complicated texts and recite them forwards or backwards. In college, Marcos' principal interest was the .22caliber college pistol team. On September 20, 1935, Julio Nalundasan was at home celebrating that day's Congressional election victory over Mariano Marcos when he was shot and killed with a .22-caliber bullet fired by the 18-year-old Marcos. Three years later, the honors student who was in his senior year of law school, was arrested for Nalundasan's murder. A year later, now a law school graduate, he was found guilty "beyond any reasonable doubt." Jailed, Marcos spent six months writing his own 830page appeal. He also took the Philippine bar exam and passed with scores so high he was accused of cheating. Upon an oral re-examination by the Supreme Court, Marcos scored even higher with his remarkable memory. When the Supreme Court finally took up Marcos's appeal in 1940, the judge in charge (allegedly influenced by Judge Chua) was disposed to simply throw the case out. Marcos was a free man. The next day, he returned to the Supreme Court where he was administered his oath as a lawyer.

Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco Aquino was the wife of Former senator Benigno Aquino Jr., who was the staunchest critic of President Marcos. When her husband died in August 21, 1983, she continued her husbands goal and became the Mother of Democracy. Then, she became the first female president of the Philippines. She was out of the office in June30, 1992. She died of cardiac arrest in August 1, 2009.

After her husband's assassination, the widowed Aquino became the unwilling and reluctant leader of the opposition against the authoritarian rule of the Marcos regime. She united the fragmented opposition and strengthened its moral crusade against the abuses and excesses of President Marcos' martial rule. In late 1985, when President Marcos called for a snap election, Cory Aquino was called upon by the people to challenge his regime. Reluctant at first, Aquino thrust herself into the political arena after one million signatures urging her to run for president were presented to her. Despite having no prior political experience, except being her husband Ninoy's wife, Aquino proved to be a charismatic leader, inspiring orator and skilled campaigner. She ran for president with former senator Salvador Laurel as her vicevicepresidential running mate. When the Marcos allies-dominated Batasang alliesPambansa proclaimed Ferdinand Marcos as the winner in the 1986 Snap Presidential Elections, Cory called for massive civil disobedience protests against him, declaring herself as having been cheated and as the real winner in the elections. Filipinos enthusiastically heeded her call and rallied behind her. These series of events eventually led to the ouster of Marcos from power and the installation of Aquino as president of the Philippines in February 1986, an event which is now known as the historic 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. Revolution.

Under Ramos' leadership, the Philippines experienced a period of political stability and rapid economic growth and expansion, as a result of his policies and programs designed to foster national reconciliation and unity. Ramos was able to secure major peace agreements with Muslim separatists, communist insurgents and military rebels, which renewed investor confidence in the Philippine economy. Ramos also aggressively pushed for the deregulation of the nation's major industries and the privatization of bad government assets. As a result of his hands-on handsapproach to the economy, the Philippines was dubbed by various international magazines and observers as Asia's Next Economic Tiger. However, the momentum in the economic gains made under the Ramos Administration was briefly interrupted during the onset of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Nevertheless, during the last year of Ramos' Crisis. term, the economy managed to make a rebound since it was not severely hit by the crisis as compared to other Asian economies. To date, Ramos is the first and only non-Catholic President of the nonPhilippines. He is a Protestant and belongs to the United Methodist Church. Church.

Joseph Ejercito Estrada (born Jose Marcelo Ejercito on April 19, 1937) was the 13th President of the Philippines, serving from 1998 until his ouster in Philippines, Revolution. the2001 the2001 EDSA Revolution. Estrada gained popularity as a film actor, playing the lead role in over 100 films in an acting career spanning 33 years. He leveraged his popularity as an actor to make gains in politics, serving as mayor of San Juan for seventeen years, as Senator for one term, then as Vice President of the Philippines under the administration of President Fidel Ramos. Ramos.

Estrada was elected President in 1998 with a wide margin of votes separating him from the other challengers, and was sworn into the presidency on June 30, 1998. He assumed office amid the Asian Financial Crisis and with agricultural problems due to poor weather conditions, thereby slowing the economic growth. Eventually, the economy recovered but at a slower pace than its Asian neighbors. neighbors. In 2000 he declared an "all-out-war" against "all-outthe Moro Islamic Liberation Front and captured it's [1][2] headquarters and other camps[1][2]. However, allegations of corruption spawned an impeachment trial in the Senate, and in 2001 Estrada was ousted from power after the trial was aborted. In 2007, he was found guilty of plunder and sentenced perpetua, to reclusion perpetua, but was later granted a pardon by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Macapagal-

[1]

president

of the Philippines Diosdado Macapagal Macapagal Don Juan Lakandula Saludung

A professor of economics, Arroyo entered government in 1987, serving as assistant secretary and undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industryupon the invitation of President Corazon Aquino. After serving as a senator from 1992 to 1998, she was elected to the vice presidency under President Joseph Estrada, despite having run on an opposing ticket. After Estrada was accused of corruption, she resigned her cabinet position as Secretary of Social Welfare and Development and joined the growing opposition to the president, who faced impeachment. Estrada was soon forced from office by what its advocates would ascribe to peaceful street demonstrations of the EDSA Revolution of 2001, but which critics credit to a conspiracy among political and business elites, military top brass and Catholic Church bishop Jaime Cardinal Sin.[3] Arroyo was sworn into the presidency by then-Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr. at around noon on January 20, 2001 amidst the EDSA II crowd, hours before Estrada left Malacaang. She was elected to a full six-year presidential term in the controversial May 2004 Philippine elections, and was sworn in on June 30, 2004. Arroyo is nearing her 10th year in power and is currently serving the second longest presidential term in Philippine history, next to Ferdinand Marcos In the 2009 rankings of Most Powerful Women by Forbes, she was ranked as the 44th most powerful woman in the world.[4]

Thank You for Watching!!!

Alyzza Victoria C. Torres 6-St. John