Claim: Dilawans renamed Manila International Airport into the Ninoy Aquino International Airport
Rating: FALSE
Benigno Aquino Jr. was murdered on the tarmac of the former Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983.
This was the reason why the date was made into a special non-working holiday. It fell on a Sunday this year so the controversy over whether this government will honor has been postponed for next year.
This is also the reason why MIA was renamed the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Moves to revert the name to MIA were founded on the reason that supporters of Ninoy were behind the renaming in the first place.
But it turned out that it was then Sen. Francisco “Kit” Tatad who first proposed the renaming of MIA to NAIA.
Verafiles wrote: “Francisco Tatad, Ferdinand Marcos’s former Minister of Public Information, as a member of the Interim Batasang Pambansa representing Bicol, claimed to be the first to propose the renaming. He reiterated this claim on the Senate floor in 1993, while the Senate was tackling a resolution—the coauthors of which included current Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III—to formally declare Ninoy Aquino as a national hero of the Philippines. That resolution was ultimately approved as one “expressing the sense of the Senate that the late Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. be declared as a national hero of the Philippines” a few days shy of the tenth anniversary of Aquino’s death.”
Tatad was then President Ferdinand Marcos’s press secretary at the time that he declared Martial Law in September 1972. It was Tatad who famously announced the declaration on TV.
Tatad did not join the opposition when he became a senator representing Bicol at the time he purportedly proposed to rename MIA. It wasn’t just a political issue at that time, not like now when three lawmakers — all BBM supporters — filed bills to rename NAIA to its original name.
Why we fact-checked this: This move is getting to be a tired political ploy. In fact, the Supreme Court already junked a similar move in 2020.
ADVERTISEMENT
