Claro Mayo Recto, Jr.

(February 8, 1890 October 2, 1960) was a Filipino politician, jurist, poet and one of the foremost statesmen of his generation. He is remembered mainly for his nationalism, for "the impact of his patriotic convictions on modern political thought". He was born in Tiong, Tayabas (now known as Quezon province), Philippines, Spain (The Philippines was not yet independent) of educated, upper middle-class parents, namely Claro Recto, Sr. of Rosario, Batangas, and Micaela Mayo of Lipa, Batangas. He studied Latin at the Instituto de Rizal inLipa, Batangas from 1900 to 1901. Further schooling was at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazn of Don Sebastin Virrey. He moved to Manila to study at the Ateneo de Manila where he consistently obtained outstanding scholastic grades, graduating with Bachelor of Arts degree maxima cum laude. He received a Masters of Laws degree from the University of Santo Toms. Claro M. Recto, Jr. launched his political career as a legal adviser to the first Philippine Senate in 1916. In 1919, he was elected representative from the second district of Batangas. He served as minority floor leader for several years until 1925. His grasp of parliamentary procedures won him the accolades of friends and adversaries alike. Recto traveled to the United States as a member of the Independence Mission, and was admitted to the American Bar in 1924. Upon his return he founded the Partido Democrata. In 1928, he temporarily retired from active politics and dedicated himself to the practice and teaching of law. Recto found the world of academia restrictive and soporific. Although he still engaged in the practice of law, he resigned from his teaching job in 1931 and reentered politics when he ran and won a senate seat and was subsequently elected its majority floor leader in 1934. He was appointedAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1935 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a jurist he held his own in famous debates even against the U.S. Attorney General with whom he waged a war of words on the question of ownership of military bases in the Philippines. Recto presided over the assembly that drafted the Philippine Constitution in 1934-35, which was in accordance with the provisions of the TydingsMcDuffie Act and a preliminary step to independence and self-governance after a 10-year transitional period. The TydingsMcDuffie Act was created in response to the HareHawesCutting Act which, through the urging of Quezon, was rejected by the Philippine Senate. The original bill would have allowed the indefinite retention of U.S. military and naval bases in the Philippines and the American imposition of high tariff and quotas on Philippine exports such as sugar and coconut oil. A few

minor changes were made and the TydingsMcDuffie bill was passed and signed into law by President Roosevelt. Together with then-Senate President Manuel L. Quezon (who eventually was elected first president of the commonwealth), Recto personally presented the Commonwealth Constitution to U.S. President Roosevelt. The consensus among many political scholars of today judges the 1935 Constitution as the best-written Philippine charter ever. Its author was mainly Claro M. Recto. In the 1953 and 1955 elections, Recto denounced the influence and coercion of the Church on voters' decisionsthe Philippines having a 90% Catholic majority at the time. In a 1958 article in "The Lawyer's Journal" he suggested that a constitutional amendment be passed to make the article on Separation of Church and State clearer and more definitive. He also rallied against the teaching of religion in public schools. Recto served as Commissioner of Education (194243), Minister of Foreign Affairs (194344), and Cultural Envoy with the rank of Ambassador on a cultural mission to Europe and Latin America (1960). In 1941, Recto ran and reaped the highest number of votes among the 24 elected senators. He was re-elected in 1949 as a Nacionalista Partycandidate and again in 1955 as a guest candidate of the Liberal Party. Claro M. Recto, Jr. is considered light-years ahead of his time. He foresaw the demands of a fast-moving global economy which his nation is incapable to meet even to this day. In a memorable speech on the eve of the 1957 presidential election where he ran against then President Carlos Garcia, he petitioned all sectors of society, and like Rizal, implored the youth:[3] Recto was defeated and never became president. Since his time, subsequent administrations practiced with fidelity and enthusiasm what he called "subservience and colonial mentality", most of them with greed and rapacious intents. To the judgment of Recto and many political gurus, colonial mentality towards America by the sycophant Philippine government, and its evil twinservility to the almighty dollar, are among the major contributories to graft and corruption, which in turn have paralyzed the nation's economy. During the presidency of Corazon Aquino, however, where Aquino initially fought for the R.P.U.S Bases Treaty but ultimately acquiesced to the will of the people, the Philippine Senate rejected its renewal. In September 1991, by a slim majority led by Senator Jovito Salonga, the lawmaking body rescinded the agreement, effectively ending U.S. military presence in the Philippines. His critics claim that Recto's brilliance is overshadowed by his inability to capture nationwide acceptance. He could have been an exceptional leader, perhaps a great president, but his appeal was limited to the intellectual elite and the nationalist minority of his time. In the same article, political editorialist, Manuel L. Quezon III, laments this fact: "Recto's leadership was the curious kind that only finds fulfillment from being at the periphery of power, and not from being its fulcrum. It was the best occupation suited to the satirist that he was. His success at the polls would be limited, his ability to mold the minds of his

contemporaries was only excelled by Rizal's...But he was admired for his intellect and his dogged determination to never let the opposition be bereft of a champion, still his opposition was flawed. For it was one that never bothered to transform itself into an opposition capable of taking power. However, one possible explanation as to why Recto was never able to capture full national acceptance was because he dared to strongly oppose the national security interests of the United States in the Philippines, as when he campaigned against the US military bases in his country. During the 1957 presidential campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted black propaganda operations to ensure his defeat, including the distribution of condoms with holes in them and marked with `Courtesy of Claro M. Recto' on the labels. Claro M. Recto died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy, on October 2, 1960, while on a cultural mission, and en route to Spain, where he was to fulfill a series of speaking engagements. The US Central Intelligence Agency is suspected of involvement in his death. Recto, who had no known heart disease, met with two mysterious "Caucasians" wearing business suits before he died. United States government documents later showed that a plan to murder Recto with a vial of poison was discussed by CIA Chief of Station Ralph Lovett and the US Ambassador to the Philippines Admiral Raymond Spruance years earlier.[8][9] Recto was married to Aurora Reyes, with whom he had two sons. He had four children in his first marriage with Angeles Silos.

Republic Act No. 1425, known as the Rizal Law, mandates all educational institutions in the Philippines to offer courses about Jos Rizal. The full name of the law is An Act to Include in the Curricula of All Public and Private Schools, Colleges and Universities Courses On the Life, Works and Writings of Jose Rizal, Particularly His Novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Authorizing the Printing and Distribution Thereof, and for Other Purposes. The measure was strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines due to the anti-clerical themes in Noli Me Tngereand El Filibusterismo. Senator Claro M. Recto was the main proponent of the Rizal Bill. He sought to sponsor the bill at Congress. However, this was met with stiff opposition from the Catholic Church. During the 1955 Senate election, the church charged Recto with being a communist and an antiCatholic. After Recto's election, the Church continued to oppose the bill mandating the reading of Rizal's novels Noli Me Tngere and El Filibusterismo, claiming it would violatefreedom of conscience and religion.[1] In the campaign to oppose the Rizal bill, the Catholic Church urged its adherents to write to their congressmen and senators showing their opposition to the bill; later, it organized symposiums. In one of these symposiums, Fr. Jesus Cavanna argued that the novels belonged to the past and that teaching them would misrepresent current conditions. Radio commentator Jesus Paredes also said that Catholics had the right to refuse to read them as it would "endanger their salvation".[1] Groups such as Catholic Action of the Philippines, the Congregation of the Mission, the Knights of Columbus, and the Catholic Teachers Guild organized opposition to the bill; they were countered by Veteranos de la Revolucion (Spirit of 1896), Alagad in Rizal, the Freemasons, and the Knights of Rizal. The Senate Committee on Education sponsored a bill co-written by both Jos P. Laurel and Recto, with the only opposition coming fromFrancisco Soc Rodrigo, Mariano Jess Cuenco, and Decoroso Rosales.[2] The Archbishop of Manila, Rufino Santos, protested in a pastoral letter that Catholic students would be affected if compulsory reading of the unexpurgated version were pushed through.[3] Arsenio Lacson, Manila's mayor, who supported the bill, walked out of Mass when the priest read a circular from the archbishop denouncing the bill.[4] Rizal, according to Cuenco, "attack[ed] dogmas, beliefs and practices of the Church. The assertion that Rizal limited himself to castigating undeserving priests and refrained from criticizing, ridiculing or putting in doubt dogmas of the Catholic Church, is absolutely gratuitous and misleading." Cuenco touched on Rizal's denial of the existence ofpurgatory, as it was not found in the Bible, and that Moses and Jesus Christ did not mention its existence; Cuenco concluded that a "majority of the Members of this Chamber, if not all [including] our good friend, the gentleman from Sulu" believed in purgatory.[5] The senator from Sulu, Domocao Alonto, attacked Filipinos who proclaimed Rizal as "their national hero but seemed to despise what he had written", saying that the Indonesians used Rizal's books as their Bible on their independence movement; Pedro Lpez, who hails from Cebu, Cuenco's province, in his support

for the bill, reasoned out that it was in their province the independence movement started, when Lapu-Lapu fought Ferdinand Magellan.[3] Outside the Senate, the Catholic schools threatened to close down if the bill was passed; Recto countered that if that happened, the schools would be nationalized. Recto did not believe the threat, stating that the schools were too profitable to be closed. [1] The schools gave up the threat, but threatened to "punish" legislators in favor of the law in future elections. A compromise was suggested, to use the expurgated version; Recto, who had supported the required reading of the unexpurgated version, declared: "The people who would eliminate the books of Rizal from the schools would blot out from our minds the memory of the national hero. This is not a fight against Recto but a fight against Rizal, adding that since Rizal is dead, they are attempting to suppress his memory. On May 12, 1956, a compromise inserted by Committee on Education chairman Laurel that accommodated the objections of the Catholic Church was approved unanimously. The bill specified that only college (university) students would have the option of reading unexpurgated versions of clerically-contested reading material, such as Noli Me Tngere and El Filibusterismo. The bill was enacted on June 12, 1956, Flag Day. Section 1 mandated that the students were to read the novels as they were written in Spanish, although a provision ordered that the Board of National Education create rules on how these should be applied.[5] The last two sections were focused on making Rizal's works accessible to the general public: the second section mandated the schools to have "an adequate number" of copies in their libraries, while the third ordered the board to publish the works in major Philippine languages.
After the bill was enacted into law, there were no recorded instances of students applying for exemption [6] from reading the novels, and no known procedure for such exemptions. In 1994, President Fidel V. Ramos ordered the Department of Education, Culture and Sports to fully implement the law as there had [7] been reports that it has still not been fully implemented. The debate during the enactment of the Rizal Law has been compared to the Reproductive Health [8] bill (RH bill) debate of 2011. Akbayan representativeKaka Bag-ao, one of the proponents of the RH bill, said, quoting the Catholic hierarchy, that "More than 50 years ago, they said the Rizal Law violates the Catholic's right to conscience and religion, interestingly, the same line of reasoning they use to oppose the RH bill.