MANILA -- When Pampanga Cong. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as the 21st Speaker of the House of Representatives on July 23, 2018, she set a string of records in her professional and political careers that can be considered unique among former presidential children.
For one thing, she now holds the distinction of being the first Filipino woman to occupy the speakership -- the top fourth post in the country’s hierarchy after the presidency, vice presidency and Senate head.
Much earlier, when she won the vice presidency in the May 1998 national elections, she also officially established the record of being the first woman to hold the country’s second highest position since its independence from Spain in 1898.
When she left Malacanang as the 14th president on June 30, 2010, she likewise set the record for being the first among the former presidential children to be elected to the country’s highest post. Of course, this particular record was immediately equaled by a former presidential son, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, who succeeded her and occupied the seat of power until June 30, 2016.
Aside from this, she also became the first-ever former presidential daughter and the first woman to duplicate the feat of her late father – former President Diosdado P. Macapagal.
Like her, the elder Macapagal was elected vice president in November 1957 and president in November 1961.
Before holding the country’s second highest post and top positions in the country successively from 1958 to 1965, the late President Macapagal also served in the old Congress, which was abolished in September 1972, with the declaration of martial law by his successor, the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The elder Macapagal, who was the country’s ninth president, also held several other top national positions, including the presidency of the 1971-1972 Constitutional Convention that framed the 1973 Constitution.
For her part, Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo, before she assumed as the country’s 14th president on January 21, 2001, was also a former lawmaker. She was first elected to the Senate in May 1992 and reelected in the succeeding 1995 polls with a record number of votes.
In May 1998, with still three years left in her Senate term, she ran for the vice presidency and won, together with former Vice President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, who was elected as the 13th president.
In President Estrada’s first Cabinet, then-Vice President Macapagal-Arroyo was given the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) portfolio although she and Estrada ran under opposite political parties.
Before her Senate stint, Mrs. Arroyo, an economist, served under the administration of former President Corazon C. Aquino as Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) assistant secretary from 1989 to1992. She was also appointed executive director of the Garments and Textile Board and later undersecretary of DTI.
On Jan. 21, 2001, then-Vice President Macapagal-Arroyo was catapulted to the presidency when she was sworn in by then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide Jr. as successor to Estrada, whose impeachment trial for corruption and plunder culminated in EDSA People Power II.
By succeeding Estrada through a constitutional provision in 2001, it can be said that she already had duplicated the achievements of her late father as early as that time -- that of being a lawmaker, vice president and president. However, it can also be said that she formally completed such a duplication with her garnering a full six-year mandate as president in the May 10, 2004 polls. She also holds the record of being the only Chief Executive to stay in office for nine-and-a-half years under the 1987 Constitution, which explicitly provides a fixed six-year term for the president without reelection.
Former President Corazon C. Aquino, the first to be covered by the present Constitution, held office for a total of six-and-a-half years from Feb. 25, 1986 to June 30, 1992. This was because under Section 5, Article XVIII or the Transitory Provisions of the same Constitution, the six-year term of the president and vice president elected in the February 7, 1986 snap elections was extended until noon of June 30, 1992 for purposes of synchronization of national and local elections beginning that year.
Mrs. Aquino’s successor, former President Fidel V. Ramos, held office for exactly six years-- from June 30, 1992 to June 30, 1998, when he relinquished his post to President Estrada.
Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo is actually the sixth vice president to be elevated to the presidency. The five others were the late Presidents Sergio Osmeña Sr. (1944-1946), Elpidio Quirino (1948-1953), Carlos P. Garcia (1957-1961), Diosdado P. Macapagal (1961-1965), and her immediate predecessor, Joseph Ejercito Estrada (1998-2001).
Osmena was vice president to Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon. When Quezon died in Saranac Lake, New York on August 1, 1944, he was succeeded by Osmeña. In the elections of April 1946, Osmeña ran for president, but he lost to President Manuel A. Roxas.
Quirino, who was vice president to Roxas, was catapulted to the presidency upon the death of Roxas on April 15, 1948. In the succeeding 1949 elections, Quirino sought a full four-year term and won over Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic President Jose P. Laurel (October 14, 1943-August 15, 1945).
When Quirino ran for reelection in 1953, he was defeated by President Ramon Magsaysay, his former Defense secretary.
Garcia assumed the presidency following the death of Magsaysay in a plane crash on Mt. Manunggal in Cebu on March 17, 1957. In the national elections of that same year, Garcia also sought a popular mandate and won over several other presidential contenders, including Jose Yulo, Manuel Manahan, Claro M. Recto, and Antonio Quirino. In his reelection bid, however, in 1961, he lost to his vice president, Diosdado Macapagal.
In the succeeding national elections in 1965, Macapagal lost to President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who imposed martial law and abolished the two chambers of Congress on September 21, 1972.
Estrada was elected vice president in May 1992 together with President Fidel V. Ramos. After serving his six-year term, he ran for president in May 1998 and won overwhelmingly over several political opponents.
Elected as Estrada’s vice president was then Senator Macapagal-Arroyo, who thus became the second among former presidential children to be elected to the country’s second highest post after the late former Vice President Salvador H. Laurel (February 25, 1986-June 30, 1992).
Laurel, who was vice president to President Aquino, was also a former senator and assemblyman. Two of his brothers -- Sotero Laurel and Jose Laurel Jr. -- also became senator and House speaker, respectively, thus following in a way the political footsteps of their late father, President Laurel.
A number of several other former presidential children have also tried their luck in politics, but unlike the late former Vice President Salvador Laurel and Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo, most of them were only able to go as far as the two chambers of Congress. Among them are former Senators Ramon Magsaysay Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada, current Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito, and incumbent Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee R. Marcos, eldest daughter of the late President Marcos.
Another former presidential son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., has been a congressman, governor of Ilocos Norte and a senator elected in the May 10, 2010 polls. On May 9, 2016, Bongbong Marcos ran for the vice presidency, but lost to Vice President Leni Robredo in a bitterly contested election result. A protest filed by the young Marcos against Robredo is still pending in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.
Former Senator, Cebu Governor and City Mayor Sergio Osmeña Jr., also a former presidential son, ran for president in the 1969 polls but lost to Marcos, who then broke for the first time the political no-reelection myth associated with the Philippine presidency.
Former presidential son Gerardo Roxas, now deceased like former Vice President Laurel and Senator Osmeña, was also a former senator and congressman. His son, Senator Manuel “Mar” A. Roxas II, also ran for the country’s presidency in May 2016, but lost to President Rodrigo R. Duterte. (PNA)
