President of the Philippines
President of the Philippines is the title of the head of state, head of government and chief executive of the Philippines. The president leads the executive branch of the Philippine government and is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
The president is directly elected by the citizens of the Philippines and is one of only two nationally elected executive officials, the other being the vice president of the Philippines. However, four vice presidents have assumed the presidency without having been elected to the office, by virtue of a president's intra-term death or resignation.
Filipinos generally refer to their president as pangulo or presidente in their local language. The president is limited to a single six-year term. According to Article VII, Section 4 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the president "shall not be eligible for any reelection" and that, "no person who has succeeded as president and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time." This constitutional limitation, however, was not violated in the case of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, although she served as president for 9 years, 5 months, and 29 days, from 2001 to 2004, after taking over the office of President Joseph Estrada, who was ousted after the Second EDSA Revolution, and from 2004 until 2010 when she served as the elected president in her own right.
The current president of the Philippines is Bongbong Marcos, who was sworn in on June 30, 2022, at the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Title
The official title of the Philippine head of state and government is "President of the Philippines." The title in Filipino is Pangulo. In the other major languages of the Philippines such as the Bisayan languages, presidente is more common when Filipinos are not actually code-switching with the English word. The honorific for the president is "Your Excellency" or "His/Her Excellency." During his tenure, President Rodrigo Duterte broke precedent by not using the honorific, opting to drop the title in all official communications, events or materials.Historical titles
The presidency of the Philippines, as a democratically elected office, was established with the title of "President of the Republic" in the 1899 Constitution, continuing until the suppression of the independent Philippine state by the United States. The term "President of the Republic of the Philippines" used under Japanese occupation of the Philippines distinguished the government of then-president José P. Laurel from the Commonwealth government-in-exile under President Manuel L. Quezon. The restoration of the Commonwealth in 1945 and the withdrawal of American sovereignty in 1946 restored the title of "President of the Philippines" enacted in the 1935 Constitution, this time applying the title to the president of a sovereign state. The 1973 Constitution, though generally referring to the president as "President of the Philippines", once reused the term "President of the Republic" in Article XVII, Section 12. In the text of Proclamation No. 1081 that placed the country under martial law in September 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos consistently referred to himself as "President of the Philippines."History
Early republics
Bonifacio's Tagalog Republic
Depending on the definition chosen for these terms, a number of persons could alternatively be considered the inaugural holder of the office. Andrés Bonifacio could be considered the president of the Tagalog provinces, while he was the third Supreme President of the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary society that started an open revolt against the Spanish colonial government in August 1896, he transformed the society into a revolutionary government with himself as "President of the Sovereign Nation/People". While the term Katipunan remained, Bonifacio's government was also known as the Tagalog Republic, and the term haring bayan or haringbayan as an adaptation and synonym of "republic", from its Latin roots as res publica. Since Presidente Supremo was shortened to Supremo in contemporary historical accounts of other people, he thus became known by that title alone in traditional Philippine historiography, which by itself was thus understood to mean "Supreme Leader" in contrast to the later "Presidents". However, as noted by Filipino historian Xiao Chua, Bonifacio did not refer himself as Supremo but rather as Kataas-taasang Pangulo, Pangulo ng Kataas-taasang Kapulungan, or Pangulo ng Haring Bayan, as evidenced by his own writings.Although the word Tagalog refers to the Tagalog people, a specific ethno-linguistic group mostly in southern Luzon, Bonifacio used the term "Tagalog" in "Tagalog Republic" to denote all non-Spanish peoples of the Philippines in place of Filipinos, which had colonial origins, referring to his concept of the Philippine nation and people as the "Sovereign Tagalog Nation/People" or more precisely "Sovereign Nation of the Tagalog People", in effect a synonym of "Tagalog Republic" or more precisely "Republic of the Tagalog Nation/People".
According to Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo, including Bonifacio as a past president would imply that Macario Sakay and Miguel Malvar should also be included, as Sakay continued Bonifacio's concept of a national Tagalog Republic, and Malvar continued the Philippine Republic which was the culmination of several governments headed by Emilio Aguinaldo that superseded Bonifacio's, Malvar taking over after Aguinaldo's capture. Nevertheless, there are still calls, including from a descendant of Bonifacio, to let Bonifacio be recognized by the current government as the first Philippine president. In 1993, historians Milagros Guerrero, Emmanuel Encarnacion and Ramon Villegas petitioned before the National Historical Institute to recognize Bonifacio as the first Philippine president but the institute turned down the petition and reasoned that Bonifacio was not even the Katipunan's first Supremo, but rather Deodato Arellano.
In 2013, the Manila City Council passed a resolution persuading the national government to declare Bonifacio as the first president of the Tagalog Republic, attributing to all natives of the archipelago of the Philippines. A separate resolution was also signed in 2013 by the Philippine Historian Association urging then Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to recognize Bonifacio as the first Philippine president. In the same year, representatives of the Philippine House of Representatives passed a house resolution that sought to acknowledge Bonifacio as the first president. A similar house resolution was also filed in 2016.
According to Marlon Cadiz of the NHCP, the agency is waiting for a thorough and clear study containing new evidence as well as explanations of experts regarding Bonifacio's status as the first president.
Aguinaldo's governments and the First Republic
In March 1897, during the Philippine Revolution against Spain, Emilio Aguinaldo was elected president of a new revolutionary government at the Tejeros Convention in Tejeros, Cavite. The new government was meant to replace the Katipunan. It variously called itself the "Philippine Republic", "Republic of the Philippines" and "Government of All Tagalogs" or "Government of the Whole Tagalog Nation/People".Months later, Aguinaldo was again elected president at Biak-na-Bato, Bulacan in November, leading a reorganized "Republic of the Philippines", commonly known today as the Republic of Biak-na-Bato. Aguinaldo therefore signed the Pact of Biak-na-Bato and went into exile in Hong Kong at the end of 1897.
In April 1898, the Spanish–American War broke out, and afterwards, the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy sailed for the Philippines. At the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, the American Navy decisively defeated the Spanish Navy. Aguinaldo subsequently returned to the Philippines aboard a U.S. Navy vessel and renewed the revolution. He formed a dictatorial government on May 24, 1898, and issued the Philippine Declaration of Independence on June 12, 1898. During this brief period he took the title "Dictator" and the Declaration of Independence refers to him as such.
On June 23, 1898, Aguinaldo transformed his dictatorial government into a revolutionary government and became known as "President" again. This form of government provided for the creation of a Revolutionary Congress that was empowered to draft a democratic constitution. The new constitution, promulgated on January 20, 1899, provided for an executive power headed by a President of the Republic, both head of state and head of government, elected by the unicameral legislature and "special representatives" He was elected President of the Republic in accordance with its provisions, and on January 23, 1899, the Philippine Republic, was inaugurated, with Aguinaldo likewise being inaugurated as President of the Republic. This state is today officially considered to be the proper "first republic" and is also called the Malolos Republic, after its capital Malolos in Bulacan; its congress and constitution are commonly known as the Malolos Congress and Malolos Constitution as well.
Like all of its predecessors and would-be successors until the 1935 Commonwealth of the Philippines, the First Philippine Republic was short-lived and never internationally recognized, and never controlled or was universally recognized by the entire area covered by the current republic, though it claimed to represent and govern the entire Philippine archipelago and all its people. Control over the Philippines was transferred from Spain to the United States by the Treaty of Paris of 1898, signed in December of that year. The Philippine–American War broke out between the United States and the Philippines over American assertions of sovereignty. The Philippine state effectively ceased to exist on April 1, 1901, after he pledged allegiance to the United States following his capture by U.S. forces in March.
The current government of the Republic of the Philippines considers Emilio Aguinaldo to be the first president of the Philippines-based specifically on his presidency of the Malolos Republic, not any of his various prior governments.