By Ben Balce
Associate Editor
FORMER President Benigno Simeon Aquino, III passed away Thursday. The 61-year-old was president of the Philippines from 2010 to 2016.
Initial reports said Aquino was brought to the Capitol Medical Center in Quezon City early Thursday for undisclosed reasons.
“Sanggibo Salamat, Pres. Noynoy” said Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Bangsamoro Transition Authority representative Zia Alonto Adiong.
Adiong said the comprehensive agreement on the Bangsamoro and the framework agreement on the Bangsamoro were completed and signed during the former president’s term.
According to Adiong, the Bangsamoro Transition Commission that drafted the Bangsamoro Basic Law which was later used as the basis for the crafting of Bangsamoro Organic Law took off during Aquino’s term.
Balay Mindanaw’s Karlos Manlupig joined the family and the whole nation in mourning of the passing Aquino.
“We honor and celebrate his life, his legacy, and his significant contribution to peacebuilding in Mindanao and our country,” Manlupig posted on social media.
The Balay Mindanaw Peace Center was privileged to host him as he went through a journey of discernment in Mindanao, eventually deciding to seek the Presidency, he added.
Meanwhile, Marawi civic leader Samira Gutoc was saddened and shocked. Gutoc was a senatorial candidate of Otso Diretso after Aquino’s endorsement in the last senatorial election.
“I am deeply humbled to have sat with him one time in my life in the hardest public trial of mine in 2019,” she said adding that a calm leader, an epitome, and the one who believed first foremost in reforms in the Armm in a post-Ampatuan massacre era.
Aquino, who championed the “Daang Matuwid” and “Kayo ang Boss Ko” slogans during his administration, served as the country’s 15th president from June 2010 to June 2016.
The son of the pro-democracy icons the late President Corazon Aquino and former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was born in Manila on February 8, 1960.
He was a three-term member of the House of Representatives between 1998 and 2007, representing the sugar-growing Tarlac province north of Manila.
Known popularly as Noynoy, he rode a wave of public support to the presidency after the 2009 death of his mother, the revered “People Power” leader Corazon Aquino, who was herself, president, from 1986 until 1992.
His namesake father, a senator who staunchly opposed the rule of strongman Ferdinand Marcos, was assassinated when he returned home from political exile in 1983.
Aquino’s health condition was put in the spotlight in December 2019. He was confined at a Makati hospital for a week to undergo a scheduled medical check-up.
