Elpidio Quirino

Elpidio Rivera Quirino (; November 16, 1890 – February 29, 1956) was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the 6th president of the Philippines from 1948 to 1953. A lawyer by profession, Quirino entered politics when he became a representative of Ilocos Sur from 1919 to 1925. He was then elected as a senator from 1925 to 1935. In 1934, he became a member of the Philippine Independence Commission that was sent to Washington, D.C., which secured the passage of Tydings–McDuffie Act to the United States Congress. In 1935, he was also elected to the 1935 Constitutional Convention that drafted the 1935 Philippine Constitution for the newly established Philippine Commonwealth. In the new government, he served as secretary of the interior and finance under the cabinet of President Manuel L. Quezon. After World War II, Quirino was elected vice-president in the April 1946 presidential election, consequently the second and last for the Commonwealth and first for the Third Republic. After the death of incumbent President Manuel Roxas in April 1948, he succeeded to the presidency. He won a full term under the Liberal Party ticket, defeating Nacionalista former president José P. Laurel as well as fellow Liberalista and former Senate President José Dira Avelino. The Quirino administration was generally challenged by the HukBaLaHap, who ransacked towns and barrios. Quirino ran for president again in November 1953 but was defeated by Ramon Magsaysay in a landslide.