Filipinos still argue over who counts as their first president
Officially, the Philippines' first president was Emilio Aguinaldo, inaugurated in 1899. But historians, a city council, House lawmakers and a descendant of the revolutionary Andrés Bonifacio have all pushed to give that honour to Bonifacio, whose secret society launched the revolt against Spain in 1896.
Bonifacio led the Katipunan, which rose against Spanish rule in August 1896, and reshaped the society into a rebel state that he headed, styling himself leader of the sovereign people. Later accounts shortened his title to Supremo, but the historian Xiao Chua notes that Bonifacio's own writings call him Supreme President. He used the word Tagalog to mean every non-Spanish inhabitant of the islands, avoiding Filipino because of its colonial origin.
Aguinaldo's claim rests on a single government. Elected president at the Tejeros Convention in March 1897, he went into exile in Hong Kong by year's end, then returned aboard an American ship after the US Navy defeated Spain at Manila Bay on 1 May 1898. He briefly styled himself Dictator, declared independence on 12 June 1898, and was inaugurated president of the Malolos Republic on 23 January 1899. That republic was never internationally recognised and ended after his capture in 1901. The current government counts him as the first president on the strength of Malolos alone.
Pressure for Bonifacio has kept coming. In 1993 three historians petitioned the national historical body, which refused, arguing he was not even the Katipunan's first Supremo. In 2013 the Manila City Council, a historians' association and House lawmakers all backed him, and another House resolution followed in 2016. The historian Ambeth Ocampo warns that counting Bonifacio would also mean counting Macario Sakay and Miguel Malvar, who carried on resistance governments into 1902.
Today's office is simpler to define. The president is both head of state and head of government, directly elected and limited to one six-year term. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo nonetheless served more than nine years, because she first finished Joseph Estrada's term before winning her own.
Source: President of the Philippines
