Memorable Noynoy Aquino

By Herbert Vego

THE unexpected death of former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III yesterday at age 61 made our day sad. I guess that, in one way or another, his passing opens in every Filipino a memory of the man who had been a former congressman, former senator and former President of the Philippines.

My earliest memory of him was unique.  It was when I literally rubbed elbows with him during a call of nature in a Batasang Pambansa CR.  I don’t recall the date, but I can vividly visualize that one-minute encounter with the then-congressman of the 2^nd district of Tarlac.

I smiled at him and he smiled back. I thought of telling him that I was a fan of his late dad, Senator Ninoy. But before I could open my mouth, he had zipped up and was moving away.

It never occurred to me that he would soon follow the presidential footsteps of his mother, by then past President Cory Aquino.

Noynoy could not have aspired to be President himself. His rise to the highest post had to be serendipitous. It was not until the death of Mom Cory in 2009 that a groundswell of insistent public demand compelled him to also run for the highest post in 2010.

His dad, the late Senator Benigno Simeon “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., had fiercely crossed verbal swords with President Ferdinand Marcos, which ended in his assassination in 1983.

That end proved to be the beginning of massive rallies condemning Marcos as the suspected brain behind the murder. Denying the charge, Marcos called for a snap election that pitted him against Ninoy’s widow on February 7, 1986.

Cory lost the count but that only emboldened the public to denounce massive manipulation of figures, culminating in the “People Power Revolution”  that drove away Marcos and his family to Hawaii, and installed the widow as President in that same month.

Cory’s own death in August 2009 during the presidency of Gloria Arroyo likewise triggered another public outcry, which was for Noynoy to run for President.

He campaigned on the platform of “tuwid na daan” (straight path) and won.

“Kayo ang boss ko!” he shouted during his presidential inauguration at the Quirino Grandstand on June 30, 2010.

He did not promise to eradicate drugs. He did not have to; his actions spoke louder than words. For example, he appointed as his justice secretary Leila de Lima, the immediate past chair of the Human Rights Commission who had exposed and denounced drug-related “extrajudicial killings” in Davao City.

It was through Aquino’s initiative that the Philippine government contested the “nine-dash-line” claim of China over the West Philippine Sea at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)  in The Hague.  The arbitral court upheld the Philippines’ rights to areas within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Farewell Noynoy.  May your passing – as did your dad’s and mom’s – unfold another redeeming chapter in our political history.

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NO DECISION YET ON ‘LV’ BRAND

OUR readers must be wondering whether our Intellectual Property Office (IP0) has decided on the “counterfeiting” case filed by French fashion magnate Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton against Ilonggo entrepreneur Martin Soriano.

As this column recently bared, the bone of contention is the logo/brand “LV” as it appears on Soriano’s tawas deodorant. While the French brand uses the same letters in upper case with the “V” superimposed over “L”, Soriano’s is “LV” in brush strokes on a backdrop of alternating red and white squares.

The IPO has rendered no decision yet, but our friend Martin is confident it would go the way of the case filed against him by Prince Harry of UK over “Archewell Harvatera” as another brand of his deodorant.  IPO had favored Soriano because his product is not in competition with the prince’s charitable organization, Archewell Foundation.

Soriano’s “LV” does not stand for Louis Vuitton but for Lopez-Vito.

It is easy to predict another victory for Martin, judging from a similar case where the Chinese  technology firm Huawei beat French perfumery Chanel in a Luxemburg court, which ruled in April 2021 that the logos “share some similarities but their visual differences are significant”. Huawei’s logo is an “H” made up of half rings intertwined vertically, while Chanel’s is a back-to-back, intertwined horizontal C.

Pero iba itong si Martin.  He is like a David besting a Goliath once, and soon… twice.