Alunan, a young lawyer from Talisay, Negros Occidental, was a member of the Philippine Assembly from 1912 to 1916. Sugar administrator Rafael Alunan was a lawyer, an Assemblyman and a department Secretary. After attending the San Jose College in his provine, he took up the preparatory law course at the Ateneo and was admitted to the bar in 1910, shortly after he completed his law studies at La Jurisprudencia. He had been practising law for two years when he was elected member of the third Philippine Assembly from 1912 - 16. He was elected president and general manager of the Bacolod-Murcia sugar central in Negros Occidental. Earlier, in 191, he had helped in organizing another sugar central, that of Maao. In 1928 Alunan was names Secretary of Agriculture by Governor General Henry L. Stimson. Later, in the cabinet of Gov. Theodore H. Roosevelt, he was appointed Finance Secretary until 1933 when he resigned in order to attend to his various sugar interests. He also served as Secretary of the Interior to World War II. During the Japanese occupation he was commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce. He was also one of the 20 members of the Preparatory Committee for Philippine Independence assigned to frame the constitution of the Japanese-sponsored Republic. Alunan was born in Talisay, Occidental Negros, on December 16, 1885, to Raymundo Alunan and Josefa Rivas. Married to the former Asuncion de la Rama, he died in an airplance crash in Mindanao on May 18, 1947.