Elpidio Rivera Quirino was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the sixth President of the Philippines from 1948 to 1953.
A lawyer by profession, Quirino entered politics when he became a representative of Ilocos Sur from 1919 to 1925. He was then elected as senator from 1925 to 1935. In 1934, he became a member of the Philippine independence commission that was sent to Washington, D.C., which secured the passage of Tydings–McDuffie Act to American Congress. In 1935, he was also elected to the convention that drafted the 1935 constitution for the newly established Commonwealth. In the new government, he served as secretary of the interior and finance under President Manuel Quezon's cabinet.
After World War II, Quirino was elected vice-president in the 1946 election, consequently the second and last for the Commonwealth and first for the third republic. After the death of the incumbent president Manuel Roxas in 1948, he succeeded the presidency. He won the president's office under Liberal Party ticket, defeating Nacionalista vice president and former president José P. Laurel as well as fellow Liberalista and former Senate President José Avelino.