Gibo Teodoro

Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr. is the current secretary of national defense, a position to which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appointed him in June 2023 or two months after the ban on losing 2022 candidates lapsed. Teodoro ran for senator in the 2022 polls but lost.

Heading the Department of National Defense (DND) is not a new task for Teodoro. He headed the department from 2007 to 2009 under president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He then ran for president in 2010, but lost. Before being appointed to executive posts, Teodoro represented the 1st District of Tarlac from 1998 to 2007. He entered politics in 1980, when he was elected president of the Sangguniang Kabataan (youth council) of Tarlac, earning him an ex-officio seat in the provincial board.

Teodoro graduated from De La Salle University Manila in 1984 and finished law at the University of the Philippines in 1989, passing the Philippine Bar the same year. He went on to study at Harvard for his Master of Laws and passed the State Bar of New York in 1997.

Efforts to modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines have been at the core of Teodoro’s push as defense secretary – during his first stint and even now. He is at the helm of the country’s defense agencies as the AFP shifts its focus to external defense, particularly in the West Philippine Sea, where China’s aggressive actions have turned bolder and bolder.

It is under Teodoro that the “re-horizoning” or the reconfiguration of Horizon 3, phase 3 of the AFP’s modernization plan, was executed. The changes were made to better suit the military’s pivot to external defense.