Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III (February 8, 1960 – June 24, 2021), also known as Noynoy Aquino and colloquially as PNoy, was a Filipino politician who served as the 15th president of the Philippines from 2010 to 2016. Before being elected president, Aquino was a member of the House of Representatives and Senate from 1998 to 2010, and also served as a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives from 2004 to 2006.
The son of politician Benigno Aquino Jr. and President Corazon Aquino, he was a fourth-generation politician as part of the Aquino family of Tarlac. On September 9, 2009, shortly after the death of his mother, he officially announced his candidacy in the 2010 presidential election, which he would go on to win. He was sworn into office as the 15th president of the Philippines on June 30, 2010, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. His presidency was marked by stabilizing and growing the nation's economy into its highest in decades, and the country was dubbed as a "Rising Tiger". Aquino is also credited for his confrontational foreign policy. His administration filed an arbitration case, Philippines v. China, before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in an attempt to invalidate China's claims in the South China Sea and asserted his own country's claims in the area; the court ruled in favor of the Philippines. Aquino received criticism for the Mamasapano clash, a botched police operation that killed 44 members of the Special Action Force, and several other issues. His non-renewable term ended on June 30, 2016, and he was succeeded by Rodrigo Duterte.
