Boholano Ex-Senator Ernesto “Boy” Falar Herrera died of cardiac arrest in a Makati City hospital last Thursday.

The Calape born senator died at 73 years old. He served for three terms as congressman of Bohol’s first district.

Former Bohol Vice-Governor Julius Caesar Herrera, the senator’s brother, told The Chronicle last night that the burial is slated in Cebu City on Nov. 9. On Wednesday, his remains will be brought to the halls of the Senate.

The late senator was a labor leader, having been until his death the secretary-general of the biggest labor confederation, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, an affiliate of the International Labor Organization (ILO). He was also the former member of the executive board of the International Confederation of Free Trade Union.

Senator Ernesto Herrera has earned for himself an enviable reputation as a trade union leader, an advocate of law and order, and a legislator in the 8th, 9th and 10th Congresses.

He served as senator of the Philippine Senate in 1987-1998. After his Senate stint, Herrera was elected as congressman representing first district of Bohol in 1998-2001.

He was also a consultant of the ILO and founding chairman of the Citizen’s Drug Watch and president of the Carlos P. Garcia Foundation, Inc.; co-founder of the Forefront technologies Foundation, Inc; and President, Alumni Association, University of the Visayas, where he finished his college and law course.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Visayas in 1966, and was awarded with a doctorate degree in Humanities, honoris causa. He graduated summa cum laude in 1995 with a master’s degree in Public Administration, major in Public Finance, at the Lyceum of the Philippines. His master’s thesis comprised of a comparative study of the tax systems of five ASEAN countries. In 1998, he obtained his Ph.D. in Fiscal Studies (magna cum laude) at the Lyceum of the Philippines.

He (was) the first Asian and the second individual to receive the George Meany International Human Rights Awards in 1985. (The first individual awardee was Lech Walesa of the Solidarity Movement, former President of Poland.) He was likewise conferred the International Award of Honor by the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association of New York, U.S.A.

“Senator Herrera rose to national prominence as a member of the Agava Fact-Finding Board that investigated the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.”