section_path: History/Philippine independence/Cityhood
section_name: Cityhood
paragraph_text: Cityhood
  
  Ignacio Santos-Diaz, a congressman from the first district of Rizal, pushed for the conversion of the town into a city and it to be named after Rizal. Republic Act No. 183 was signed into law by President Manuel Roxas on June 21, 1947, officially establishing Rizal City, named after José Rizal, with Mateo Rufino as mayor and a population of 88,738. As of June 1948, the city had revenues of ₱472,835 (equivalent to ₱58,504,230 in 2021). But the residents could not get themselves to call their city by its new name. After two years, eight months, and twelve days of trying, the force of habit prevailed and Eulogio Rodriguez Jr., Santos-Diaz's successor, filed a bill returning the city to its original name. On June 7, 1950, President Elpidio Quirino, once a resident of Pasay himself, signed into law Republic Act No. 437, which changed the name of Rizal City to Pasay City.
  
  It was also in the 1940s when houses of faith were constructed in different parts of Pasay. Among them was the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Libreria de San Pablo Catholic Women's League, Caritas, the nutrition center, and the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1951, two parishes were established: the Parish of San Isidro Labrador and the Parish of San Rafael. By that time, the city was once more the aviation center of the country when what is now Ninoy Aquino International Airport opened its doors in 1948.
  
  On June 14, 1955, Pasay regained its power to choose its leader. Pablo Cuneta ran against one-time Mayor Adolfo Santos and became the city's first elected mayor. In 1959, he campaigned again and won against his former vice mayor, Ruperto Galvez. On December 30, 1965, Ferdinand Marcos was sworn in as President of the Philippines, with Fernando Lopez, a resident of Pasay, as vice president. From that moment, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, the then First Lady, became involved in national affairs. On the northern boundary of Pasay, she started filling the waterfront on Manila Bay to build the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In the later decades she would add three more architectural showpieces on reclaimed land in Pasay: the Folk Arts Theater, Manila Film Center, and the Philippine International Convention Center, and later on the PhilCite Exhibition Hall, the basis of what is now Star City. The city, though, was also being groomed as a television center for the country, for in 1958, ABS-CBN had opened its brand new television studios on what is now Roxas Boulevard, later handing it over in 1969 to the Radio Philippines Network, which used them until a 1973 fire which ruined the studios, as ABS-CBN had moved northward into Quezon City with the opening of its current studios and offices.
  
  In 1967, Jovito Claudio won the city elections as chief executive against Pablo Cuneta. In the following year, an assassination attempt occurred in Pasay when a Bolivian surrealist painter lunged at Pope Paul VI, with a knife grazing his chest. In 1971, Cuneta was re-elected as city mayor of a growing city of almost 90 thousand people.