Benigno Aquino III

Biography

Benigno 'Noynoy' Aquino III was born in Manila in 1960, the only son of the opposition senator Benigno Aquino Jr. and Corazon Aquino. He studied at the Ateneo de Manila University from elementary school to a bachelor's degree in economics in 1981, then joined his family in exile in Boston. They returned after his father's assassination in 1983, and he held jobs in business and at the family's Hacienda Luisita sugar refinery. In the August 1987 coup attempt against his mother he was hit by five bullets.

A Liberal, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Tarlac in 1998 and served as a deputy speaker from 2004 until 2006, when he joined calls for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign over the Hello Garci scandal. He won a Senate seat in 2007.

After his mother's death in 2009 a popular movement urged him to run, Mar Roxas stepped aside, and he won the 2010 presidential election. His government introduced K-12 schooling, oversaw rapid economic growth, pursued peace agreements with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and brought an arbitration case against China over the South China Sea, which was decided in the Philippines' favour in 2016. He was criticised over the 2010 Manila hostage crisis, the response to Typhoon Haiyan and the 2015 Mamasapano clash.

After leaving office in 2016 he faced charges over Mamasapano and a budget programme, and was acquitted of the Mamasapano charges. He died in Quezon City in June 2021 of kidney disease linked to diabetes.