THE SUPREME Court has rejected a lawsuit questioning the validity of a law that renamed Manila International Airport to Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

Justices voted unanimously to dismiss the petition filed by lawyer Lorenzo G. Gadon, court spokesman Brian Keith F. Hosaka told reporters in a Viber message on Wednesday.

The plaintiff in an August 27 suit claimed the law changing the airport’s name to NAIA violated the guidelines on naming and renaming public structures.

He said the airport was named after Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. in November 1987, just four years after his death. This allegedly violated the rule that a public place should not be named after a person within 10 years of his death “except for highly exceptional reasons.”

“Aquino was never declared a hero and as such does not deserve that an airport be named after him,” he said in the lawsuit.

Mr. Aquino was assassinated at the tarmac of the airport on Aug. 21, 1983. The guidelines that Mr. Gadon cited were approved 20 years after the airport was renamed. — Vann Marlo M. Villegas

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