Filipino politician Nene Pimentel, 85, dies

MANILA, PHILIPPINES » Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a Filipino lawmaker who helped orchestrate the 1986 People Power Revolution that overturned more than a decade of martial law and ended the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, died Sunday in Manila. He was 85.

The cause was lymphoma, said a spokesman for his son Aquilino Pimentel III, the president of the Philippines Senate.

Pimentel was a human rights lawyer who in a long political career served as mayor of the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, founded a political party and spent decades in the Senate, where he, too, rose to the rank of president. He became a household name in the Philippines when he organized opposition to the Marcos regime.

Marcos, who governed the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, declared martial law in 1972, ushering in one-man rule for the next 14 years.

Pimentel, known as Nene, was imprisoned three times for expressing his opposition to the president and martial law.

In 1982, he, along with Benigno Aquino, founded the opposition party Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan, more commonly known as PDP-Laban. The assassination of Aquino by Marcos forces in 1983 instigated the popular uprising that became known as the People Power Revolution.

Sen. Leila de Lima, a critic of the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, said in a statement that Pimentel was one of the country’s “most respected statesmen.”

In addition to his son, Pimentel is survived by his wife, Lourdes dela Llana; another son, Aquilino Pimentel IV; and three daughters, Teresa Lourdes Pimentel, Lorraine Marie Pimentel and Gwendolyn Gana, who is a commissioner of the independent Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines.