FIDEL V. RAMOS (1928-2022)

Post-EDSA what struck me most about FVR was how tight-lipped he was about the four days, refusing to tell his story to media. So unlike Juan Ponce Enrile whose story in two parts, buttressing his denial of the reformist coup plot that would have installed him in Marcos’s place, was published in the Sunday Inquirer magazine by mid-March ’86.

Could it have been because, as some pundits suggest, FVR was not really part of the aborted RAM coup — the reformists who were caught in Malacanang and presented to the public by Marcos named only Enrile’s boys of the MND and not Ramos’s of the PC-INP?  But historian Alfred McCoy (“Coup!” Veritas Special Edition, Oct 86) named Vic Batac Jr., Ramos’s chief intelligence officer, as one of the three masterminds (along with Honasan and Kapunan). And in a 1991 interview Gen. JoeAl confirmed that Ramos was in on it from the start.

JOSE ALMONTE: We planned the whole action mainly under two offices: the Ministry of National Defense and the office of Gen. Ramos, then PC Chief and AFP Vice Chief of Staff. His closest aides and the chief of his security, Sonny Razon, were members of our core group; they kept the general informed of meetings and developments [http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/day1.php]

But because Ramos didn’t rush to join Enrile in Camp Aguinaldo for the Feb 22 presscon, he gave the impression that he might have changed his mind or was having second thoughts. But I think he was just making pa-importante, choosing to flirt first with Alabang Coryistas who were urging him to resign from the Marcos government. I also think that he wanted to send the message that he was not at the beck and call of Enrile. I daresay he was confident that Enrile would not do the breakaway presscon without him.

LEWIS M. SIMON. RAM recognized that while a significant number of officers and men were prepared to line up behind Enrile, his long political and personal association with Marcos had tainted him in the minds of many more. And this was doubly true among the civilian power structure, the wealthy businessmen who’d emerged as an anti-Marcos force and the large middle class who’d tirelessly marched and demonstrated ever sine the Aquino assassination. Ramos’s image was much cleaner. [Worth Dying For (1988) page 265]

In October 86, when historian Alfred McCoy confirmed the reformist plot that Enrile had denied (“Coup!” Veritas Special Edition, Oct ’86), I figured that FVR’s silence had to do with keeping intact what relationship he had with Enrile: he didn’t care to contradict his fellow Bandido’s account, the better to keep communication lines open perhaps, or to avoid fueling  anti-Cory sentiments, what with Enrile and his RAM-boys mounting foiled coup after foiled coup to topple Cory ’86-’89.

In August 1990 when I heard that he was running for president in ’92, and that his team was looking for a biographer, I jumped at the offer, sabay tanong if he would finally tell his EDSA story, sabay send ng print-out of my draft chronology, mostly from news reports of the four days along with Enrile’s, Butz Aquino’s, and McCoy’s accounts, along with data from Nick Joaquin’s The Quartet of the Tiger Moon (1986) and Cecilio Arillo’s Breakaway (1986), among others.

My draft was a hundred or so pages pa lang then but substantial enough, apparently, for FVR to say yes to an EDSA project, never mind the biography. In our interview sessions in Camp Aguinaldo and Ayala Alabang, he would often check out my chronology, though never  to correct any of it, rather, to remind himself of details and statements he was reported to have made during the four days. Very careful, very measured in his words, he was able to tell his story without ever commenting, one way or another, on Enrile’s own statements, except to say that he concerned himself only with military affairs and left the politics to Enrile.

And yet there he was, five years later, playing politics to the hilt, revving up for a presidential campaign that he would win, against all odds.  Never mind that he changed his mind about publishing the EDSA book he commissioned, I imagine for some greater good involving Enrile and the reformist-loyalist military who were still smarting from the last, the bloodiest, the failed 1989 coup attempt.

It is interesting, in an occult way, that FVR was rushed to Makati Med a few days before he died, which may have been a day or two after, if not the day itself of, Enrile’s oathtaking as Marcos Jr.’s Chief Presidential Legal Counsel. The outpouring of tributes for FVR hailing him as the best president ever hopefully gives Marcos Jr. and Enrile pause, to take stock, and maybe resolve to do FVR even better.

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President Fidel V. Ramos — an appreciation by Stephen CuUnjieng

FVR’s firm and soft legacies by Cielito F. Habito

Philippines’ Fidel Ramos sought Beijing ties but also showed South China Sea defiance by Raissa Robles

‘Tabako’ by Ma. Lourdes Tiquia

Once he’d been a statesman by Manuel L. Quezon III

The president who freed the skies by Milwida Guevarra

FVR: The unwritten biography by Ambeth Ocampo

FVR’s out-of-the-box style of leadership by Jarius Bondoc

Statesman by Alex Magno