Horacio Morales
Horacio " Boy" Morales, Jr. ( born September 11, 1943 in Moncada, Tarlac province; † February 29, 2012 in Quezon City ) was a Filipino economist and politician who was among other things, during the tenure of President Joseph Estrada Minister of Agrarian Reforms and put them in numerous non-governmental organizations for the development of the Philippines.
Life
Moncada studied post-school economics at the University of the Philippines in 1965 and earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA Economics). He then joined as an economist in the government of President Ferdinand Marcos and graduated a little later a postgraduate degree in economics from the University of Oklahoma, which he finished with a Master of Arts (MA Economics) in 1968. In the course of his subsequent career, he was Vice President of Development Academy ( Development Academy of the Philippines ).
For his achievements in the field of economic and development strategies, he was elected in 1977 by the Junior Chamber International ( JCI) as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the Philippines. On the day of the award ceremony, he announced his retirement from the government service and joined the Partido ng Pilipinas Komunista, which waged a guerrilla war against dictator Marcos since 1969. In the following years he took an active part in the battles of this underground movement before he was arrested in 1982. Morales was until 1986 in prison and was then released under an amnesty for political prisoners by the newly elected President Corazon Aquino after the overthrow of Marcos.
Subsequently, he was from 1986 to 1998 president of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement ( PRRM ), a non-governmental organization founded in 1952 to support poor people. In 1987, he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate of the New Democratic Party Alliance ( Bagong Alyansang Makabayan ) for a seat in the Senate.
On 1 July 1998 he was appointed by President Joseph Estrada as Minister of Agrarian Reform ( Secretary of Agrarian Reform ) in his cabinet and remained in this position until the fall of Estrada by the EDSA Revolution on 11 February 2001. Successor as Minister then was Hernani Braganza. At the same time he was temporarily President and General Secretary of the party in 1991, founded by Estrada force of the Philippine masses ( Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino ) and from 1998 to 2001 and Chairman of the Development Academy.
After leaving the government, he became involved in various non-governmental organizations to continue as the Fund for Assistance to Private Education ( FAPE ), Integrated Protected Areas, Inc. ( NIPA ), Responsible Parenthood Council ( RPC), La Liga Policy Institute.
In December 2011, he suffered a myocardial infarction in Baguio City and fell into a coma. For this coma he never awoke and died after transfer to the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City.