Manuel Acuña Roxas QSC (Tagalog: [maˈnwel aˈkuɲa ˈɾɔhas]; January 1, 1892 – April 15, 1948) was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the fifth president of the Philippines from 1946 until his death in 1948.

Roxas became one of the leaders of the Nacionalista Party, which was dominated by the hacendado class who owned the vast hacienda estates that made up most of the cultivated land in the Philippines.

[10] At the same time that the U.S. Congress was debating granting independence to the Philippines, many Filipino leaders were worried by the increasing assertive claims being made by Japan that all of East Asia was its sphere of influence.

[13] In May 1930, Roxas reported to Manuel L. Quezon that both Hurley and Stimson had testified before the U.S. Congress saying that the Philippines were not ready for independence nor would be for anytime in the foreseeable future, which he thought had a major impact on the U.S.

[14] Upon his return to the Philippines in 1930, Roxas founded a new pro-independence group called Ang Bagong Katipunan ("The New Association") that proposed disbanding all political parties under its fold and the unification of national culture in order to negotiate better with the United States.

[15] The plans for Ang Bagong Katipunan created widespread opposition, as the group was seen as too authoritarian and as a vehicle for Roxas to challenge Quezon for the leadership of the Nacionalista Party.

[16] In talks with Quezon, Osmeña, and Roxas, it was agreed that the Philippines should become an autonomous commonwealth under American rule and would be allowed to keep exporting sugar and coconut oil to the United States at the present rate.

[17] At the time, Roxas cynically stated he and the other Nacionalistas had to make "radical statements for immediate, complete and absolute independence to maintain hold of the people".

The United States was scheduled to grant the Philippines independence in 1945 while Japan started to make claims for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from 1940 onward.

[21] However, as the United States was planning on granting independence, ending more than 400 years of foreign rule, Filipino public opinion was hostile to the idea of the Philippines joining the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

[25] The American journalist Richard Rovere described Roxas as typical of the Filipino hacendado class (the wealthy owners of the hacienda estates) who sought to opportunistically ingratiate themselves with whatever power ruled the Philippines.

[28] The Manila chapter of the fascist Falange party had a membership of about 10,000 people, including members of the most prominent hacendado families such as the Ayalas, Zobels, Elizaldes and Sorianos.

[29] The American historian Russell Buhite wrote: "Roxas was the Philippine equivalent of the fabled French statesman Charles Maurice de Tallyrand who was able to blend with the wind, able to work with authority wherever he found it".

Disguised as a Catholic priest, the bearded, tanned Parsons would visit Roxas even while the latter was effectively under house arrest, and privately "receive confession" from the Filipino statesman regarding the disposition of the Japanese forces, the collaborationist government, and various matters of state.

[31] On October 20, 1943, the head of the Japanese military police, Akira Nagahama, surprised President Laurel in Malacañang and demanded the arrest of Roxas, whose office was a short distance away.

[33] The ruthless policies of confiscating rice harvests pushed many of the Filipino peasantry to the brink of starvation and made Roxas into one of the most hated men in the Philippines.

[30] The general felt that whatever Roxas and the other hacendados had done during the Japanese occupation was irrelevant compared to the need to have the haendados continue as the dominant group as MacArthur believed that the Philippines would descend into anarchy without the leadership of the educated class which had been responsible for governance since the time of the Spanish.

[29] The British historian Francis Pike wrote that Roxas "effectively brought" the 1946 election, helped by the fact that he owned the largest newspaper empire in the Philippines.

[19] However, the U.S. government was apparently not aware of the change in public opinion, and favored Roxas as the man best able to allow the United States to keep its bases after independence.

Among other things, he told the members of the Congress the grave problems and difficulties the Philippines face and reported on his special trip to the United States to discuss the approval for independence.

[39] Roxas's expulsion of the Democratic Alliance from Congress was the beginning of a nation-wide purge of those who served in the Huk resistance against the Japanese as arrests and murders followed.

Roxas's term as the president of the Commonwealth ended on the morning of July 4, 1946, when the Third Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated and independence from the United States proclaimed.

On the Grandstand alone were around 3,000 dignitaries and guests, consisting of President Roxas, Vice President Quirino, their respective parties, and the Cabinet; first United States Ambassador to the Philippines Paul McNutt; General Douglas MacArthur (coming from Tokyo); United States Postmaster General Robert E. Hannegan; a delegation from the U.S. Congress led by Maryland Senator Millard Tydings (author of the Tydings–McDuffie Act) and Missouri Representative C. Jasper Bell (author of the Bell Trade Act); and former Civil Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison.

No sooner had the fanfare of the independence festivities ended that the government and the people quickly put all hands to work in the tasks of rescuing the country from its dire economic straits.

[51] The war had burned cities and towns, ruined farms and factories, blasted roads and bridges, shattered industries and commerce, massacred thousands of civilians, and paralyzed the educational system, where 80% of the school buildings, their equipment, laboratories and furniture were destroyed.

[53] Numberless books, invaluable documents and works of art, irreplaceable historical relics and family heirlooms, hundreds of churches and temples were burned.

Pike noted that the Japanese as part of their efforts of "liberation" from American imperialism by bringing the Philippines into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere "...had smashed industrial buildings, banks, government offices and hotels.

The Central Intelligence Agency in a report noted that the Philippines was dominated by "an irresponsible ruling class which exercises economic and political power almost exclusively in its own interests".

[52] U.S. officials throughout the late 1940s that Roxas was a corrupt leader whose policies openly favored the hacendado class and that unless reforms were made, it was inevitable that the Huks would win.

[51] Although Roxas was successful in getting rehabilitation funds from the United States after independence, he was forced to concede military bases (23 of which were leased for 99 years), trade restriction for the Philippine citizens, and special privileges for U.S. property owners and investors.