Claro M. Recto


Claro Mayo Recto Jr. was a Filipino lawyer, jurist, writer, author, columnist, diplomat, and statesman who served as a senator of the Philippines from 1931 until his death in 1960. Recto was the primary author of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, one of the foremost figures in the Philippine Independence from the United States, and is remembered as the "Great Dissenter" and the "Great Academician", as a fierce opponent of U.S. neocolonialism in Asia in his later years, and a staunch Filipino nationalist throughout his career.
Recto began his political career as the representative for the 3rd District of Batangas in 1919 and held the position until 1928, emerging as a prominent member of the Democrata Party. He was elected as a senator to the 10th Philippine Legislature, where he opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, and later became president of the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention that drafted the 1935 Constitution. Recto and future president Manuel L. Quezon personally presented the constitution to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also appointed Recto as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines—the last to be appointed by the United States.
At the height of World War II, Recto was detained by the United States for suspected collaboration with the Japanese, but was nonetheless reelected in 1941, garnering the highest number of votes among the elected senators. He joined the KALIBAPI during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and served in President Jose P. Laurel's wartime cabinet. Recto was faced with treason and collaboration charges at the end of the war, but refused the amnesty issued by President Manuel Roxas and chose to defend himself in court instead. He was acquitted of all charges.
He was reelected to the Senate in 1949 and 1955, where he was an outspoken critic of continued American influence in Asia—as well as Presidents Elpidio Quirino and Ramon Magsaysay—for which he was targeted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Following Carlos P. Garcia's assumption to the presidency in 1957, Recto and Senator Lorenzo Tañada defected from Nacionalista and established the Nationalist Citizens' Party. The pair ran under the NCP in the hotly-contested 1957 presidential election, but ultimately lost, ending up fourth in the national vote.
In 1960, Recto was appointed the Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Philippines' cultural envoy. He died under mysterious circumstances on October 2, 1960, in Rome, on a diplomatic mission en route to Spain. Historians believe that the CIA may have had a hand in his death.
He is the father of former Batasang Pambansa assemblyman Rafael Recto and grandfather of Secretary of Finance Ralph Recto.

Early life and education

Claro M. Recto was born in Tiaong, Tayabas, Philippines, to educated, upper-middle-class parents—Claro Recto Sr. of Rosario, Batangas, and Micaela Mayo of Lipa, Batangas. He began studying Latin at the Instituto de Rizal in Lipa from 1900 to 1901. He continued his education at Colegio del Sagrado Corazón of Don Sebastián Virrey and completed his secondary schooling in 1905 at the age of 15.
He then moved to Manila to attend the Ateneo de Manila, where he consistently earned outstanding scholastic marks, graduating maxima cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1909. He went on to obtain a Master of Laws degree from the University of Santo Tomás, and in 1969, he was conferred a Doctor of Laws degree honoris causa by Central Philippine University.

House of Representatives (1916–1928)

Recto launched his political career in 1916 as a legal adviser to the first Philippine Senate. In 1919, he was elected representative from the second district of Batangas.
Recto joined Juan Sumulong's opposition party, the Partido Democrata National, and was its candidate for Speaker of the House in the 1922 elections. The party won 25 seats, though Recto was defeated by the Nacionalista-Colectivista candidate Manuel Roxas, and instead became House Minority Floor Leader until 1925.

1924 Philippine Independence Mission

On July 17, 1923, all Filipino members of Governor-General of the Philippines Leonard Wood's Council of State resigned en masse in the 1923 Philippine Cabinet Crisis, following prolonged tensions over Wood's perceived autocratic actions. Recto and the Democrata Party sided with Wood on the matter, for which then-Senate President Manuel L. Quezon labeled them as "traitorous" during the special senatorial election of 1923.
Meanwhile, when news of the crisis reached Washington in early 1924, support for Philippine autonomy surged in the 68th United States Congress, and a flood of congressional resolutions and bills ranging from immediate Philippine independence to complete autonomy with an option for freedom were introduced.
By March, a bill by Indiana Representative Louis W. Fairfield gained the most popularity. It proposed a commonwealth with an elected Filipino leader, a 25-year transition period, continued U.S. military bases, and American control over foreign relations, debt, and defense until full independence. Support for the bill proved overwhelming, though the rapid pace alarmed the Coolidge administration. Wood was urged to publicly oppose Congress's hasty push for independence, to no avail.
Likewise, Quezon and senator Sergio Osmeña felt that—although Congress had meant well—the bill's terms were unsatisfactory and it was being advanced too quickly. They launched the 1924 Philippine Independence mission to the United States in an attempt to delay the Fairfield bill.
To ensure bipartisan support, Quezon invited Recto to join the mission, along with Osmeña and Resident Commissioners of the Philippines Isauro Gabaldon and Pedro Guevara. They arrived in early May, and after a private meeting between Quezon and US Secretary of War John W. Weeks, the Fairfield bill was successfully delayed. In the same year, Recto was admitted to the American Bar.
However, Recto—despite not being present at the meeting—somehow acquired key documents of the exchange, and in November 1924, revealed that Quezon had accepted terms falling short of full independence. In doing this, Recto attempted to position the Democrats as defenders of immediate independence and take revenge for Quezon's insult in 1923.File:Manuel Luis Quezon,, with representatives from the Philippine Independence Mission.jpg|thumb|left| Isauro Gabaldon, Sergio Osmeña, Manuel L. Quezon, Claro M. Recto, Pedro Guevara, and Dean Jorge Bocobo; the representatives from the Philippine Independence Mission in May 1924.His plot backfired, however, as Quezon and Osmeña were able to rally the legislature to their version of events. They insisted that they had rejected the Fairfield bill outright and would accept only full independence or continued "slavery" under American rule. Recto would again be defeated by Roxas in another bid for the House Speaker title in the 1925 elections.

Hiatus and return to politics

After his congressional term ended in 1928, Recto temporarily retired from politics and dedicated himself to the teaching and practice of law, joining the Guevara, Francisco, & Recto law firm. He would describe the world of academia to be "restrictive and soporific" and reentered politics in 1931.

Senator of the Philippines (1931–1960)

First term (1931–1935)

He was elected senator from the Fifth Senatorial District in the 1931 Senate elections but simultaneously lost his bid for Senate President against the incumbent Quezon. Recto would serve as the Senate Minority Floor Leader until 1934, becoming known as the "one-man fiscalizer" during this period. Recto switched to the Nacionalista Party in the 1934 senate elections and was elected Senate Majority Floor Leader.

Philippine independence (1934–1941)

The 1931 OsRox mission culminated in the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act, which sought to establish the Philippine Commonwealth as a transition government for 12 years and promised the country full independence on July 4, 1946. However, the act would also have required the Philippines to exempt American goods from customs duties and essentially allowed the indefinite retention of U.S. military and naval bases in the Philippines, as well as the American imposition of high tariffs and quotas on Philippine exports such as sugar and coconut oil.
Opposition sparked in response to the controversial provisions, with the ruling Nacionalista Party dividing into two factions pending the act's ratification: Recto joined Quezon's faction who opposed the act, against Osmeña's faction, who supported it. In the end, the Philippine Legislature rejected the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act.
Quezon spearheaded another Philippine Independence mission to the US in 1934, securing the passage of the Tydings–McDuffie Act. The act formally established the Commonwealth as the transitional government of the Philippines, and specified a framework for the drafting of a Philippine constitution along with several mandatory constitutional provisions, including the approval of both the United States president and the Filipino people. Before independence, the act also allowed the U.S. to maintain military forces in the Philippines and to call all military forces of the Philippine government into U.S. military service. Finally, the act mandated U.S. recognition of the independence of the Philippine Islands as a separate and self-governing nation after a ten-year transition period.

1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention

Recto presided over the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention, which that drafted the 1935 Philippine Constitution, from 1934 to 1935, under the stipulations of the Tydings–McDuffie Act. He was the primary author of the constitution, thus becoming known as the "Father of the Philippine Constitution."
Together with Quezon, who was later elected the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Recto personally presented the 1935 Constitution to United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The consensus among many Philippine political scholars of today judges the 1935 Constitution as the best-written Philippine charter ever in terms of prose.
He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines on July 3, 1935, by President Roosevelt, and would be the last Associate Justice appointed by the United States, holding the position until November 1, 1936.