PNoy: The man who braved the Goliath that is China

Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III, the 15th President of the Philippines lived, and died, alone. With a broken heart. A chain smoker since his teens, Noynoy Aquino had been in poor health towards the end of his life. He suffered from hypertension, was diabetic, and just a month before he passed away from renal disease on 24 June 2021, he had an angioplasty in preparation for kidney transplantation.

After that procedure, Aquino had confided to a close friend, former Ateneo de Manila president Fr. Jose Ramon Villarin, that he had another kind of a “broken heart,” the type, he said, that could not be salved.

Villarin said the former president’s other “heartache” was in his disappointment about how things were after his term ended in 2016. “The man carried the nation’s pains; the nation’s broken heart — assaulted by unbridled violence — was this man’s broken heart.”

Though he came from illustrious provenance, there were many things that gave Aquino a heartache all through his life growing up, the third — and only male — child of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

Father in detention

He grew up with his father, the brilliant outspoken Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was the youngest ever to be elected Philippine senator and among the most eloquently vocal critics of then President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.

Ninoy Aquino was among the first to be detained on trumped up charges of illegal possession of firearms, subversion, and murder when Marcos declared martial law in September, 1972. His father was imprisoned, until 1980 when Marcos allowed him to fly to the US for heart surgery, along with his family.

How was it to grow up with a father in detention? A friend and classmate in high school at the Ateneo, Ricky Avanceña, grandson of former President Manuel Quezon remembered those days when, “on the surface, it seemed that he (Noynoy Aquino) was living a pretty normal life. But we all knew the suffering he was going through.”

“At an age when one hates to stand out and wishes to just blend with everyone else, he had to wait alone on the bench outside our classroom… that image of a long empty corridor and this one boy outside, waiting for the car which would take him to Fort Bonifacio to visit his father on that one day a week his family could visit — it haunts me to this day,” Ricky said.

In his own letter written to Noynoy while in detention at Fort Bonifacio, Ninoy Aquino asked for his son’s forgiveness “for passing unto your young shoulders the great responsibilities for our family. I trust you will love your mother and your sisters and lavish them with the care and protection I would have given them.”

‘Stand by your mother’

Ninoy told him, “Stand by your mother as she stood beside me through the buffeting winds of crisis and uncertainties, firm and resolute and uncowed. I pray to God you inherit her indomitable spirit and her rare breed of silent courage.”

His mother, Corazon Aquino, she, with that “rare breed of silent courage” whom his father knew intimately well, would later take on and trounce his father’s nemesis, and become the Philippine’s first woman president. Nearly two decades and a half later, the son would follow suit, as the country’s 15th chief of state.

The Benigno Aquino presidency was marked by highs and lows. There were major incidents that rocked his Presidency, like the 2010 Luneta hostage crisis that killed eight Hong Kong tourists, and the 2015 Mamasapano tragedy where 44 police agents of the elite Special Action force were felled by Moro rebels.

Aquino’s term in office also saw former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo charged with corruption and held in detention for half a decade; Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment and removal from office for undisclosed wealth; and Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Bong Revilla, and Jinggoy Estrada charged with plunder in relation to the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam (all three, today, are cleared from these cases).

On the high side, the Benigno Aquino administration will be remembered by investors and the business community for steering the Philippine economy through six years of consistently high growth, finally allowing the Philippines to get rid of its reputation as “the sick man of Asia,” and shine as a “rising tiger” economy.

Under his stewardship, the Philippines gained an unprecedented period of economic growth and political stability, in turn, reviving domestic and international business confidence in the country.

Investment grade status

In 2013, the Philippines, for the first time in history, garnered “investment grade” status from the world’s leading credit rating agencies, with Standard & Poor’s Rating Services upgrading the country’s credit rating to a notch even higher than investment grade.

As a result, the borrowing cost of both the Philippine government and the private sector was lowered to 4 percent from 12 percent in the previous administration, with the credit rating giving confidence to foreign lenders about the country’s capacity to honor its obligations.

The Aquino administration’s good governance initiatives and dogged anti-corruption campaign were widely recognized and lauded as among the factors behind the revival of the Philippine economy.

Another legacy, one that will likewise be forever remembered is that of Aquino, the son of two icons of democracy, as the only president who brought China to court over a dispute involving the South China Sea, particularly parts of which the country claims as the West Philippine Sea.

The arbitration case against China was filed on January 22, 2013. The case was triggered by a standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels in the disputed Panatag Shoal (Scarborough Shoal), 124 nautical miles off the coast of Zambales, and clearly within the Philippines’ 200 — nautical mile economic zone.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled favorably on the Philippine case, invalidating China’s “9-dash line” claim and affirming the Philippines’ sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea.

China, expectedly, refuses to acknowledge the ruling to this day. Still, the whole world (except China), acknowledges that the PCA ruling was a milestone legal victory for the Philippines under Benigno Aquino, reaffirming the country’s rights over parts of the South China Sea.

When Aquino ended his term as President, he left a country that had a thriving, stable economy — one of the best, if not the best performing among over 10 Asian economies during that first quarter of the year that he was done with the Presidency.

Roxas eulogy

Delivering his eulogy at the Church of the Gesu at the Ateneo de Manila, on 26 June 2021, Aquino’s friend and co-worker in government, Mar Roxas summed up what the former president was like, close up. “PNoy cared for what seemed like little things: the attention to detail on typos, the dedication of his co-workers, the abolition of wang-wang (vehicle blaring siren), the courtesy of dressing up properly to funerals.”

But more importantly, he said, Aquino aimed for the big things: rejecting corruption, protecting the national interest, and giving Filipinos what they deserved. “This ethos, what PNoy would want, reverberated throughout his government, not in a petty or selfish way, but in a “common good” sort of way, in a “para sa mga boss (the people) ko (for my bosses) kind of way,” in a “flag waving, hand over your heart, bayan bago ang sarili (country, before self)” way,” Roxas said.

Through all the challenges he encountered, Aquino “persevered, trusting his values as his compass: always, the national interest and the people’s welfare prevailed; that was his brand of leadership, by example, by high moral standards, by adherence to his values, by appealing to the best in us, by aspiring for what can be, by trusting that in the end, good will prevail over evil.”

Roxas likened the late, lamented President to “a comet with a single purpose. Like those highly engineered stereo systems that he loved, or target pistols, or super roadsters — they were all highly engineered instruments. They were impractical for everyday life, but when given time and space and need, wow, they performed magnificently.”