Photo of poet, statesman, The great nationalist Claro M. Rector -- president of the Constitutional Convention of 1934 -- was born in Tiaong, Tayabas, on February 8, 1890, to Claro Recto, Sr. and Micaela Mayo. A product of the Ateneo and Santo Tomas, he was admitted to the bar in 1914, the same year that he obtained his LL.M. degree. In 1916 he became a legal adviser in the Senate and three years later was elected Representative from Batangas. He was reelected in 1922 and again in 1925. In 1924 he went to the U.S. as a member of the legislative mission and was admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court that same year. Upon his return he founded the Democrata Party. He was elected Senator in 1931 over Jose P. Laurel, served as minority floor leader for 3 years and later majority floor leader and president pro-tempore. He was elected president of the Constitutional Convention on July 30, 1934, and then became Associate Justice of the Supreme Court until 1941 when he successfully ran for the Senate a second time. During the Japanese occupation he was Commissioner of Education, Health and Public Welfare. Later he became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic. He lost the presidential election of 1957, however, to Carlos P. Garcia. As a parliamentarian, Recto was an oppositionist and later in his career a professed nationalist. He opposed the early Philippine-Japanese Reparations Agreement which limited reparations payment to only 00 million. He objected to the vague terms of the RP-US Mutual Defense Pact as well as to foreign sovereignty over American bases in the Philippines. He was also a staunch advocate of economic nationalism. Sen. Recto was in addition a poet, satirist, dramatist and author. He wrote law books like "Asiatic Monroeism," "The Law of Belligerent Occupation" and "Three Years of Enemy Occupation"; several one-act plays like "Solo entre las Sombras" and "La Ruta de Damasco"; and a collection of poems titled "Bajo los Cocoteros." He was a recipient of the Zobel prize for literature. Sen. Recto died of a heart attack on October 2, 1960, while giving a news conference in Rome. He was survived by his second wife the former Aurora Reyes.