Philippine President Noynoy Aquino and US President Barrack Obama now have one thing in common. They’re both included on TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list for 2013.
Flashback: President Noynoy Aquino graced the cover of TIME Magazine’s April 24, 2010 issue with the questioning headline: “Can Noynoy Save the Philippines?” Three years after, Noynoy made it on the magazine’s “100 Most Influential” list. Now, we know the answer to that question.
TIME Magazine, via its official website time.com on Thursday, praised the Philippine President for steering the country’s economy to become Asia’s ‘Next Big Thing.’
Here’s the write-up about Aquino by Howard Chua-Eoan for this year’s TIME 100:
His father was the Philippines’ most famous political martyr, his mother its most beloved President. Benigno (“Noynoy”) Aquino III inherited that legacy and, boosted by national mourning at the death of Corazon Aquino in August 2009, won the presidency in 2010. President Aquino quickly began making his own name. The sputtering economy stabilized and became hot. Aquino pushed through a reproductive-rights law that many said was impossible in the fervently Catholic nation. Most important, he became the face of the regional confrontation with Beijing over its claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. It is a brave stance, the long-term consequences still unknown.In a country of nicknames, Filipinos proudly call their President PNoy — a pun on the word they use for themselves: Pinoy. For his courage, however, he really should have the pet name the family gave his eldest sister Maria Elena: Ballsy.
