I remember President Noynoy still carried a bullet wound from a 1987 attempted military coup against President Cory's administration, during which he was shot five times and three of his bodyguards were killed.
President Noynoy died at the Capitol Medical Center near the capital Manila, Philippine News Agency reported, adding that his family will release a statement soon after suffering kidney disease. He had an an background as an Economist working at the Conjuangco Sugar plantation in 1998 and later on serve as a Congressman for Tarlac. His father, Senator Benigno Aquino Sr. was assassinated at the Tarmac of the then Manila International Airport upon returning from the United States from exile in 1983. This then led to the EDSA Revolution of 1986 which toppled the Marcos dictatorship and for the Marcoses to exile in Honululu leaving behind the 5,000 pairs of shoes in the Malacanang Palace, the ill-gotten wealth un-resolved globally while the the slums in Manila are still starving on daily basis and today still shut down due to the covid-19 pandemic.
His 6 year term had a steady economy in a way has some economist say. Yet one the controversies that was unpopular was when He also approved a controversial government operation that left 44 commandos dead while pursuing a wanted Malaysian armed leader in the southern island of Mindanao.
That incident derailed the peace agreement with Muslim rebels that Aquino spearheaded during his time in office.
Aquino, whose family went into exile in the U.S. during Marcos’s rule, had turbulent ties with China as president. After China effectively seized a disputed shoal in 2012 following a tense standoff between Chinese and Philippine ships in the South China Sea, Aquino authorized the filing of a complaint before an international arbitration tribunal that questioned the validity of China’s sweeping claims in the strategic waterway on historical grounds.
“We do not wish to increase tensions with anyone, but we must let the world know that we are ready to protect what is ours,” Aquino said in his State of the Nation Address to Congress in 2011.
The Philippines largely won. China refused to join in the arbitration and dismissed as a sham the tribunal’s 2016 ruling, which invalidated Beijing’s claims to virtually the entire South China Sea based on a 1982 U.N. maritime treaty and continues to defy it. Aquino’s legal challenge and the eventual ruling plunged the relations between Beijing and Manila to an all-time low. -- quoted from the Houston news.
One of the legacies of the President Aquino's presidency was the signing of a 2014 peace deal with the largest Muslim separatist rebel group in the country, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in 2014 that eased decades of sporadic fighting in the country’s south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
May Noynoy rest in peace as he joins his mom and dad,
