Claro Mayo Recto Jr. (February 8, 1890 – October 2, 1960) was a Filipino politician, statesman, lawyer, jurist, author, writer, columnist, and poet.

During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, he became affiliated with the KALIBAPI party and served in Japanese-installed President Jose P. Laurel's wartime cabinet.

[7] However, he later found the world of academia restrictive and soporific, and he reentered politics in 1931, serving as a senator and Minority Floor Leader from 1931 to 1934.

[6] The 1931 OsRox mission culminated in the enactment of the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act (1933), which established the Philippine Commonwealth as a transition government for 12 years and promised the country full independence on July 4, 1946.

Finally, the act mandated U.S. recognition of independence of the Philippine Islands as a separate and self-governing nation after a ten-year transition period.

[11] Recto presided over the assembly that drafted the Philippine Constitution in 1934–35 in accordance with the provisions of the Tydings–McDuffie Act and a preliminary step to independence and self-governance after a 10-year transitional period.

By 1943, the Commonwealth established a government-in-exile in Washington, DC; however many politicians stayed behind and collaborated with the occupying Japanese, among them Recto and then-Minister of Interior José P. Laurel.

As Minister, he signed the Philippine-Japanese Treaty of Alliance alongside Japanese Ambassador to Philippines Sozyo Murata on October 20, 1943.

[13] After the war, Recto, along with Laurel, Minister of Education Camilo Osías, and Senator Quintín Paredes, was taken into custody and tried for treason, but he successfully defended himself was acquitted.

He wrote a defense and explanation of his position in Three Years of Enemy Occupation (1946), which convincingly presented the case of the "patriotic" conduct of the Filipino elite during World War II.

On April 9, 1949, Recto opened his attack against the unfair impositions of the U.S. government as expressed in the Military Bases Agreement of March 14, 1947, and later in the Mutual Defense Treaty of Aug. 30, 1951, and especially the Tydings Rehabilitation Act, which required the enactment of the controversial parity-rights amendment to the constitution.

He debated against U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. on the question of U.S. ownership of military bases in the Philippines.

In a speech on the eve of the 1957 presidential election, he petitioned all sectors of society and implored Philippine youth:[15] The first task to participate seriously in the economic development of our country (is to) pursue those professions for which there is a great need during an era of rapid industrialization.

He wrote a three-volume book on civil procedures, which, in the days before World War II was standard textbook for law students.

He initially gained fame as a poet while a student at University of Santo Tomás when he published a book Bajo los Cocoteros (Under the Coconut Trees, 1911), a collection of his poems in Spanish.

A staff writer of El Ideal and La Vanguardia, he wrote a daily column, Primeras Cuartillas (First Sheets), under the pen name "Aristeo Hilario."

Among the plays he authored were La Ruta de Damasco (The Route to Damascus, 1918), and Solo entre las sombras (Alone among the Shadows, 1917), lauded not only in the Philippines, but also in Spain and Latin America.

"[20] 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.

United States government documents later showed[citation needed] 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.

His sentences march like ordered battalions against the inmost citadel of the man's arguments, and reduce them to rubble; meanwhile his reservations stand like armed sentries against the most silent approach and every attempt at encirclement by the adversary.

The reduction to absurdity of Nacionalista senator Zulueta's conception of sound foreign policy was a shattering experience, the skill that goes into the cutting of a diamond went into the work of demolition.

Political editorialist Manuel L. Quezon III, laments:Recto's leadership was the curious kind that only finds fulfillment from being at the periphery of power, and not from being its fulcrum.

[citation needed] 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.