BREAKING NEWS- TRIBUTES: MANILA Philippines- BENIGNO AQUINO III- UPDATES: Death of former Philippine president Noynoy Aquino

“One of former president Aquino’s biggest decisions was to confront China in an international tribunal over the issue of the West Philippine Sea. Only history will judge if it was his greatest decision,” said Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, who was former Malacañang deputy executive secretary under Aquino.

Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Delfin Lorenzana mourned the passing of former president and commander-in-chief Noynoy Aquino III, and extended his sympathies to Aquino’s loved ones.

According to Lorenzana, Aquino advocated for the strengthening of the country’s defense and security capabilities. The defense chief also recognized the former president for the passage of Republic Act 10349, which revitalized the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ modernization program.

As former commander-in-chief, Aquino also upheld the importance of equipping the armed forces with advanced technologies to better respond to domestic and regional security threats, according to Lorenzana.

Edwin Lacierda, then spokesperson of Benigno Aquino III, said the former president had “governed our country with honest leadership, decency, and civility.”

“History will judge his governance with favor but for now, he belongs to the ages,” Lacierda said in a tweet.

In this 2017 interview with Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, former Philippine president Benigno Aquino III talks about his realizations a year after office, the state of the nation during the first year of the Duterte administration, and charges filed against him by the Ombudsman

Davao City and presidential daughter Sara Duterte and other city government officials expressed condolences for the passing of former president Benigno Aquino III.

“The City Government of Davao is one with the nation in praying for the eternal repose of the soul of former President Benigno Aquino III,” read a statement she sent to Rappler on Thursday, June 24.

The Mindanao city will also honor the late president by flying the Philippine flag at half-mast until Aquino is buried, the statement read.

He was the first president to name a female chief justice, the first president to deliver his State of the Nation Address in Filipino, and by the time he stepped down in 2016, he had the least appointees to the Supreme Court.

Read more about Benigno Aquino III’s many firsts.  

Johaira Wahab, former member of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), said it was an honor to have served under the late former president Noynoy Aquino’s peace panel for the Bangsamoro region.

Under Aquino’s term, there was an unprecedented number of women and youth involved in the peace process, according to Wahab. The former commissioner added that Aquino facilitated the approval of numerous agreements on the substantive agenda of the BTC.

She added that Aquino helped recover the momentum after the scrapping of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD), which sought to include the then-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and other parts of Mindanao and Palawan in the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.