By Manny Mogato, News5 editor-at-large
(July 31, 2022) – Fidel Valdez Ramos, one of the heroes of the military-backed popular uprising in 1986, which toppled a dictator and restored democratic space in the poor Southeast Asian country died on Sunday. He was 94 years old.
A son of a diplomat, Ramos, who rose to become the 12th president of the Republic of the Philippines, was the first and only Methodist leader and best remembered for the country’s brief period of peace, stability and economic growth.
“The Ramos family is profoundly saddened to announce the passing of former President Fidel Valdez Ramos,” the Ramos family said in a statement.
“We thank you all for respecting our privacy, as the family takes some time to grieve together. We will announce wake and funeral arrangements in the near future.”
Ramos won a contested election in 1992 with less than a million vote margin but soon won the support of the people by building a “rainbow” coalition.
Known as FVR, he entered into peace talks with all “enemies of the state”, including rogue soldiers who attempted nearly a dozen times to unseat his predecessor, Muslim secessionist rebels and Maoist-led guerrillas fighting to overthrow the government,
His six-year administration was more successful on the economic front, opening the country’s economy to foreign investments through deregulation and liberalization policies.
He also broke up well-entrenched monopolies in the transportation and communications sectors, decisively ending a debilitating 12-hour power outage, and cutting down poverty incidence to 31 percent from 39 percent through his Social Reform Agenda.
A former defense secretary, he was also successful in shrinking the number of Maoist-led guerrillas to more than 5,400 rebels from a high of 25,000 in early 1986.
His security forces also stopped an attempt to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II and helped track down Islamist militants who were linked to the first attack at the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.
As a soldier, he had fought in two wars – the Korean war in the 1950s as a platoon leader and in the late 1960s in Vietnam as a leader of the Philippine Civil Action Group.
During his inaugural speech at the Luneta, Ramos sought for national unity to meet the challenges of the young Republic.
“For most of my public life, I have been mainly a citizen soldier, wanting in eloquence compared to those who have preceded me in this rite of democratic transition,” he said.
“But I share their vision of what our nation can become. This nation will endure, this nation will prevail and this nation will prosper again–if we hold together.”
Throughout his term, he kept on repeating his administration’s slogan: Unity, Solidarity and Teamwork.
Ramos had attended public schools in his elementary years when his father Narciso was still practicing law in Pangasinan. After the war, he was a cadet at the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, graduating in 1950 and joining the Armed Forces of the Philippines as a second lieutenant in the Philippine Army.
Journalists who had covered Ramos during the Cory years saw the dramatic transformation of a rigid soldier to a civilian bureaucrat and later a politician.
When he was new at his job at the defense department, he would walk out from his regular press conferences when reporters asked him tough and controversial questions.
He would often give long kilometric and rambling answers to a simple question that when reporters made transcripts of the press conference, it would turn out he did not give a straight answer and just went around it.
But, much later, when he was president, he had learned the art of charming the press, cracking “corny jokes” during news conferences and answering questions straight and simple.
He had learned to be patient and restraint, keeping his cool when a member of the Foreign Correspondent Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) directly asked him if Rosemarie “Baby” Arenas was his mistress as there were rumors about the relationship even before he was elected president.
Among the country’s presidents, from the time of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. up to the present, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Ramos was the most accessible to the press.
He always had a Wednesday press conference in Malacañang and would often allow the press to field questions on him during out-of-town and out-of-the-country coverages. He also generously gave one-on-one interviews to both local and international news agencies.
Journalists also remembered the courage and leadership of Ramos during many occasions when even his own life was in danger. Many recalled him coming out last from a burning Fokker plane after it overshot a runway in Samar, making sure everyone had gone out safe.
In another incident, during a flight from Zamboanga to Cotabato, he would tell everyone on a military aircraft that just lost one engine and dropped several thousand feet to calm down, “everything’s okay, get back to work”
Ramos was also a multi-tasking workaholic and athletic leader. When he was military chief, he would play golf and jog, at the same time, running after his ball. His early morning jog is legendary among his staff officers and at 80 years old he would jump to reenact what he did during the EDSA revoltution in 1986.
His multi-tasking skill surprises many people. During his frequent national peace and order council meetings in the provinces, which some people criticized him for early campaigning for the presidency in 1992, he would read, write marginal notes on some newspaper clippings, but would butt in and make a comment during a forum when you think he is not listening and doing something else.
After all, he was a survivor of many battles, he was a warrior and as he would always brag “no soft job for Ramos”.
