Bill wants to remove Aquino name from international airport

THREE congressmen have filed a bill seeking to rename the Ninoy Aquino International Airport as the Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas (Philippine International Airport).

“We need a more representative branding for the international gateway of our country,” Deputy Speaker and presidential son Paolo Z. Duterte, one of the bill’s authors, said in a statement on Thursday.

The other authors of the bill were Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Jay Q. Velasco and ACT-CIS Party-List Rep. Eric G. Yap.

The Manila International Airport was renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport — in honor of the political nemesis of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos — through a law passed in 1987.

Corazon C. Aquino replaced him as President after he was ousted by a popular street uprising in 1986.

It was President Rodrigo R. Duterte who allowed the dictator to be given a hero’s burial in November 2016 amid protests from Marcos critics.

Former Senator Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. the strongman’s son, had courted the elder Duterte to become his running mate in the 2016 national elections.

Mr. Duterte earlier raised the possibility of the younger Marcos becoming vice president if he wins his election protest against Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo. — Genshen L. Espedido