PEOPLE have been talking from coffee shops to Congress about renaming the current Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA, perhaps just reverting back to its original name, the Manila International Airport or MIA. But it was just that – talk. Nobody seriously did anything to actually change the name.
To change the name of NAIA needs an act of Congress, specifically a law and we all thought it will just remain a topic for conversation or discussion no matter the embarrassment of having our premier gateway to the world named after a politician who had actually done nothing for the Philippines except promote his political ambitions.
That is until three congressmen actually filed a bill to change the name of the airport. Excerpts from the June 25, 2020 issue of The Manila Times:
House bill seeks to rename NAIA
A bill filed at the House of Representatives seeks to rename the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
If passed into law, the proposed measure, House Bill 7031, would change the airport’s name to the Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas.
“NAIA is the international gateway of the Philippines, being the biggest and largest international airport in the country. As such, there is a need to identify the same as belonging to the Philippines. Hence, the proposed renaming to ‘Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas,’” the lawmakers who filed the bill said in their explanatory note.
“With the proposed name, the airport will easily be identified as the international doorway of the country, in view of it being in Filipino language and branding it as the international airport of the Philippines,” they said.
NAIA used to be called the Manila International Airport (MIA).
In 1987, through Republic Act 6639, the MIA was renamed NAIA after former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was assassinated at the airport in 1983.
House Bill 7031 had for its principal authors Davao City 1st District’s Rep. Paolo Duterte, Marinduque’s Rep. Lord Allan Jay Velasco and ACT-CIS’s Rep. Eric Go Yap.
In view of this, another school of thought came up. Why not name the airport “Rolando Galman International Airport”instead.
For the uninformed, aside from Ninoy Aquino there was another corpse on the tarmac of the then MIA that Aug. 21, 1983 and he happened to be Rolando Galman.
And this is the official version then of Le affair Galman: the government declared that Rolando Galman, a communist hitman acting on orders from the Philippine communist party chairman Rodolfo Salas, was the man who killed Aquino. Years later, the official investigation into the assassination concluded that Galman was a scapegoat in a larger plot to kill Aquino.
There were talks that the “assassination” was self-inflicted; it went awry. Aquino was not supposed to die, only wounded and from his hospital bed he would rally the natives for a final push to bring Ferdinand Marcos down.
Somehow Aquino stumbled as he was going down the stairs from the plane, the amateur “assassin” fired simultaneously as he stumbled, hitting his head instead of the shoulders as was the plan.
Now what gives credence to this is the fact that his wife became President of the republic using his bloody corpse as election propaganda and later his son also became president yet they never did anything to find and go after Ninoy Aquino’s killer or killers.
And what about the man they imposed upon us to honor? What had he done for the country and the natives?
Ninoy Aquino was a congressman and a senator and during his time as a member of both legislative bodies not a single bill or law was passed coming from him.
If that sounds familiar, he had a son and namesake, more popularly known as Noynoy Aquino, who also was a congressman and a senator – for a combined 12 years – but not a single bill or law was passed to his name.
The late Ninoy Aquino spent his time in the Senate doing privilege speeches denouncing then President Marcos, grandstanding to make himself look good and Marcos look bad. But really, those speeches only benefited himself as they were all in aid of election and not of legislation.
Aquino vehemently opposed Marcos for two things: he wanted to become President of the Republic and Marcos was his main stumbling block, and the lease from the government of Hacienda Luisita was about to expire and Marcos already served noticed that it would not be extended and the government wanted it back.
So just because he was shot and died at the tarmac of MIA it should bear the burden and embarrassment to be named after this utterly useless demagogue.
Rolando Galman was also shot and died on the tarmac of MIA and in fact had done more for the cause of the “devotees to the cult of the yellow ribbon”. You see, if he indeed shot Ninoy Aquino then it was the trigger that made the incompetent saint Cory Aquino and that nincompoop Noynoy Aquino both president of the republic.
So why not Rolando Galman International Airport? Indeed, why not!/PN
