Benigno Aquino, the only son of the Philippines’ two enduring democracy icons and a former president of the Southeast Asian country, died in a Manila hospital on Thursday.
He was 61.
Known popularly as Noynoy, he rode a wave of public emotion all the way to the presidency after his mother, Corazon Aquino, died in 2009.
He had carefully crafted an image as a corruption fighter, and won plaudits for a period of economic growth that helped dispel the Philippine’s “sick man of Asia” reputation.
A namesake of his father, whose 1983 assassination at Manila’s international airport sparked an uprising that toppled the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship three years later, Aquino was the Philippines’ 15th president.
Mr. Aquino’s family said he died peacefully in his sleep due to “renal disease secondary to diabetes.”
