Fidel Ramos, You Da Man!

I don't read the Manila Bulletin, and the article is more than a week old, but I liked it so much that I'm going to post it here in it's entirety.

Landscape
Gemma Araneta

Hamlet no more

IN my humble opinion, the presidential term of Gen. Fidel Ramos was quite baffling. Suddenly, there were no more coups, although he had won barely 20 percent of electoral votes in the 1992 elections. Evidently, chronic destabilizers, mutineers, and plotters, even those in the military and police, were more than content to bask in his rule. Not a whimper from the church about the Protestant President’s population planning policies. A Rainbow Coalition was formed in Congress. The Centennial was enthralling and the National Museum of the Filipino People finally got a palatial home.

"Philippines 2000" was President Ramos’ audacious battle cry even if his constitutional mandate had to end in June, 1998. No one bothered to question why Ramos engraved "Philippine 2000" on license plates, official stationery, endorsed it to travel agents, painted it on rooftops of public and private buildings. It was not even subliminal, the message was loud and clear – he, the "good president," deserved at least two more years in office (if not more) to continue his programs. In all fairness, President Ramos did restore peace and order and political stability by putting a lid on military restiveness. Moreover, he put an end to those horrendous 10hour daily power outages that made life impossible during the Aquino administration. By 1996, the GNP had risen to 7.2 percent and the GDP to 5.8 percent. With braggadocio, Ramos claimed that the Philippines was the region’s new tiger. But, he spoke much too soon because the Asian economic crisis burst his economic bubbles as GNP plunged to 0.1 percent and GDP to 0.6 percent.

To achieve Ramos’ "Philippines 2000," National Security Adviser General Jose Almonte orchestrated a movement for Charter change ( Cha-cha), bolstered by the PIRMA which expeditiously collected 4 million signatures nationwide as proof of popular will. However, in an interview by "Newsbreak" magazine, Gen. Almonte hinted that Charter change (Cha-cha) was not a self-serving plan to extend Ramos’ mandate to 2000 and beyond as that could be accomplished through "people’s initiative," a democratic device imbedded in the 1987 Constitution. By popular acclaim – with PIRMA’s four million signatures as proof – an exemption in the term limitation could be granted a president perceived to have "done very well." Proponents of Cha-cha and PIRMA were convinced that a swift change to the parliamentary form of government could cancel the 1998 elections and thwart the political ambitions of Ramos’ formidable rival, then Vice President Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

Curiously, when the stage was set for "Philippines 2000," Pres. Fidel Ramos was suddenly seized by Hamlet-like indecision and abandoned Cha-cha and PIRMA. In the 1998 elections, he first anointed Gen. Rene Villa as presidential candidate of his political party but then dropped him to promote Congressman Jose de Venecia who lost miserably to Vice President Joseph Estrada. (The latter won a historic 10 million votes.)

There were probably times when former President Ramos cursed his past political vacillations. Indecision did him in during EDSA 1 and 2, after one of those coups that plagued the Aquino administration and more recently during the mutiny of disgruntled young officers at Oakwood, Ayala Center. However, last Friday, it was not the "Shameless" Ten who made the final coup but Fidel Ramos who moved decisively to position himself a heart beat away from his ultimate objective. Discarding Hamlet’s mask, he gave a solo press conference at Malacañang’s Kalayaan Hall. Fidel Ramos projected himself as the knight in shining presidential armor who saved the beleaguered administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

I'm scared mommie!!!