THE former Philippine president, Fidel Ramos, turned 90 last week, evidently still his old jovial self, down to the occasional public stunts to show he can still defy age and gravity.
The former leader, who was president from 1992 to 1998, used his birthday celebration to launch another of his collection of speeches and newspaper columns in a book form.
Ramos’ long life-story is as colourful as it was eventful, reflecting the political tumult of his country during his time. He was both a cousin and protégé of Ferdinand Marcos, president from 1965 to 1986 when he was overthrown in the so-called People Power revolution that Ramos helped instigate.
A professional policeman, Ramos rose to become a general, but, was always eclipsed by a fierce Marcos loyalist, General Fabian Ver. Along with Marcos’ defence minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, Ver had been instrumental in enforcing the martial law that had kept the president ensconced in the presidential Malacanang Palace from 1972 onwards.
As Marcos sought to entrench himself further in power, his powerful coterie of trusted acolytes led by Ver grew increasingly brutal in a crackdown against political opponents. The turning point came when opposition leader Benigno Aquino Junior was gunned down on the tarmac of the airport in Manila as he returned from exile in 1983. By turning Aquino into a political martyr, Marcos’ key lieutenants (though probably not the physically enfeebled leader himself) sealed their patron’s political fate.
The outpouring of popular outrage that followed Aquino’s assassination reached such a crescendo that it culminated in his widow, Corazon, being swept into the presidency in Marcos’ place.
That in itself did little to quell the Philippines’ notorious political disquiet. Corazon Aquino’s time as president was best known for a series of abortive coups that rocked her administration, robbing her of any real chance to stabilise the country and move forward.
It thus fell on her anointed successor, Ramos, to set in place policies that finally gave the country a chance to get up on its feet and lay the essential building blocks for real progress.
The economic reforms and general social renewal instituted under Ramos’ watch have been singularly successful in turning the Philippines into what it is today.
But, Ramos (or more accurately his country) was ill-served by the post-Marcos constitutional stricture limiting successive presidents to a single six-year elected term. His minions tried, but failed to have the term limit over-turned, causing Ramos to lament at one point that six years may be too long if the country had a bad president, but, too short if it had a good one.
Ramos’ words were to turn oddly prophetic. He was succeeded by the popular, but, politically disastrous Joseph Estrada, who was ousted in what was described as People Power II, mid-term. Estrada was in turn succeeded by Gloria Arroyo whose nearly a decade in power was again mostly wasted as she struggled and was hobbled by a series of corruption scandals.
The death of the saintly Corazon Aquino triggered a weary nation’s nostalgia for her upright leadership and propelled her equally reluctant son, Benigno Aquino III, into the presidency in 2010.
Ironically, by the end of the second Aquino administration in 2016, the Philippines was, in many ways, back to the time of boisterous and unruly public discourse that presaged Marcos’ imposition of martial law in 1972.
A public hungry for public order and certainty turned to a Marcos admirer, Rodrigo Duterte, whose unexpected election and unconventional governing style have roiled the nation and upset the traditional ruling elite in Manila as never before.
Ramos was instrumental in persuading Duterte — best known as the no-nonsense mayor of Davao City — to run as president. Both the former and current presidents seem now to have grown cold towards each other.
The former president had previously offered Duterte unsolicited public advice. But he, of all people, ought to know leading a country is tough enough without a former leader breathing down his neck. He has thus kept his peace since.
John Teo views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak. He can be reached via johnteo808@gmail.com