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RAUL MANGLAPUS SUCCUMBS TO CANCER

Manila, July 26, 1999- Former senator and foreign affairs secretary Raul Manglapus died yesterday of cancer of the throat in his home in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. He was 80. His remains lie at Saint James Parish in Ayala Alabang.

Manglapus was born in Manila on October 20, 1918.

He obtained his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from the Ateneo de Manila and his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sto. Tomas.

His last government position was president and chief executive officer of the Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC). Manglapus started his public career in 1954 when President Ramon Magsaysay appointed him as undersecretary of foreign affairs.

He became Foreign Secretary in 1957, the youngest in Philippine history and was the topnotcher senator in 1961. He ran for President of the Philippines in 1965 against former President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

In 1968, he founded and became president of the Christian Social Movement (CSM), predecessor of the National Union of Christian Democrats (NUCD).

When Marcos was pushed out of the Philippines in 1986, Manglapus came back home and served in the government as a senator and later as a foreign minister during the Aquino administration.

He was the national chairman of the ruling Lakas-NUCD-UMDP party of which former President Fidel V. Ramos is Emeritus. The party is a member of the Christian Democrat International (DCI) of which Manglapus was vice president.

He recently stepped down as president and chief executive officer of the Philippine National Oil Company and was chairman of the College Assurance Plan Corp.

He escaped imprisonment when Marcos declared martial law in 1972 as he was overseas on a speaking engagement in San Francisco.

In 1973, when his family joined him in the U.S., he founded and became president of the Movement for a Free Philippines (MPF) with chapters all over the US, Canada, Europe and some parts of Latin America.

During his 13 years of exile in the US, Manglapus held fellowship at Harvard, Cornell and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He taught at the School of International Service of the American University and served as president of Democracy International, an organization of exiled world leaders seeking the restoration and institution of freedom in their respective countries.

Among his books published in the Philippines and the US are: Will of the People, Freedom House, New York, 1896; A Pen for Democracy, MPF Washington, D.C. 1983; Philippines; Silenced Democracy, Orbis Book, New York, 1976; and Land of Bondage, Land of Free, Solidaridad, Manila, 1963.

As a playwright and musician, he wrote the music, lyrics and libretto of "Manifest Destiny: Yankee Panky," a musical comedy which satirizes the Philippines struggle for freedom and democracy against Spain and the US at the turn of the century. It has been successfully staged in New York, Honolulu and Manila. It will be staged again in September, 1999 in Manila and in November, 1999 in Washington D.C.

In 1996 when President Clinton visited the Philippines, he played the saxophone with Manglapus and his Executives Band. The band is composed of his friends in business, government and the diplomatic corps and currently includes the country's top architect, the head of the USAID in Manila, a doctor of theology and former first lady Amelita Ramos. The band also jammed with the likes of the late Duke Ellington, as well as the kings of Thailand and Cambodia and performed for the Pope at the Vatican in 1995.

Manglapus is survived by his wife Pacita and children Toby and Ana , Tina and Ben , Raul Jr. and Diane, Bobby and Ria, and Francis and Lynn , and grandchildren Kana, Siggy, and Hochi; Tanya, Raul, and Traci; Marika and Gabrielle; Borii and Q; and Cara and Miko.

Reported by: Sol Jose Vanzi