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Supreme Court asked to nullify law naming airport NAIA


Failed senatorial candidate Lorenzo Gadon has asked the Supreme Court to nullify the law that changed the name of the Manila International Airport to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The lawyer said in a petition that Republic Act No. 6639 violated the National Historical Commission of the Philippines' (NHCP) guidelines on the naming of streets, public schools, plazas, building, bridges and other public structures.

The law was enacted in 1987 and Gadon said the guidelines were approved in 2007, or 20 years later. The 1987 Constitution prohibits the enactment of ex post facto laws, or laws that punish an act committed before there was a law penalizing it.

Gadon, however, said that the prohibition applied only to criminal laws. He argued that RA 6639, which is not a criminal law, was "not exempted from a future guideline, such as the NHCP Guidelines."

He said RA 6639 violated the guidelines because it renamed the airport in 1987, four years after former senator Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on its tarmac, when the rules provide that renaming could not be done within 10 years of the person's death except for "highly exceptional reasons."

Some of such "exceptional reasons," according to the guidelines, are death due to "assassination in the service of the country" or giving "exceptional service to the nation."

Gadon also claimed that Aquino was never declared a hero and as such did not deserve that an airport be named after him."

Republic Act No. 9256 designated August 21 of every year Ninoy Aquino Day, a national non-working holiday, "in order to commemorate" Aquino's death anniversary.

Gadon was one of the personalities who initiated an impeachment complaint against former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Sereno was removed from her post in 2018 not due to impeachment, but through a quo warranto petition voted on by the SC. -NB, GMA News

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