During my student activism, there were three Filipinos we feared — and hated — the most: the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, followed by his Defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and then his Integrated National Police chief Fidel V. Ramos.
Those three, together with the United States government, formed the cabal that lengthened the sufferings of the Filipino people under one-man rule. The young generation may not be familiar with our slogan nowadays, but we took it to heart back then: “Down with the US-Marcos Dictatorship.”
We lumped Marcos with the United States for the simple reason that, as everyone would agree, the long dark years of the dictatorship (i.e., between 1972 and 1986) would not have been, well, that long, were it not for the tacit and implicit backing of the sitting president in the United States.
In fact, despite the overwhelming numbers marching at Edsa, all of us in that generation would aver that Marcos could readily have held on to power had it not been for President Ronald Reagan’s most trusted senator Paul Laxalt. It was Laxalt who told Marcos bluntly over the phone hours before the latter and his family went on exile that fateful February 25, 1986, advising him in no uncertain words to “cut and cut cleanly,” meaning to stand down and give up the presidency with no bloodshed because the United States would no longer back him up.
Barely a decade later, Gen. Ramos had become our president, even if many of us even today still think it was the late Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago that should have had the right to sit in Malacañang. The tumultuous events at Edsa had saved both Ramos’s and Enrile’s skins. And, for standing behind beleaguered Cory Aquino as coup after coup, some hatched by Enrile, pummeled the post-dictatorship president, he became the heir apparent.
Now comes President Rodrigo Duterte, riding a populist wave that has brought him to the halls of power and bringing with him a vision of the nation away from the usual, away from the path of least resistance and into a potential geopolitical earthquake of such magnitude as to move the country out of the orbit of the US and into the waiting arms of Russia and China.
And who comes in to remind Duterte of our historic obligations and ties, no matter how disadvantageous? No other than former president and former US-Marcos dictatorship enforcer Fidel V. Ramos, the most “Amboy” (America’s boy) of all the Amboys in this country. Why are we not surprised?
The recent tirades of the former president, delivered not in hushed tones inside Malacañang but through the printed word in a national daily, were immediately met with silence from the Duterte camp, akin to a dutiful grandson being chastised by an angry grandfather, whip in hand.
Ramos’s fury had apparently reached such a proportion that, like the sitting vociferous president, he even allowed himself the luxury of one cussword “S___T!” in capital letters.
Seeing a president veering away from our supposedly steady and stable American master and suddenly playing coy to untested China and Russia does that to you.
On the opposite end, unfortunately, are other nations giddying at the apparent comeuppance the United States and the European Union are finally getting from a hitherto unnoticeable tiny little archipelago.
What are we ordinary mortals to make of this sudden about-face by the very person Duterte specifically thanked during his inaugural speech for egging him to take a shot at the presidency?
First, Ramos’s tirades are not just his. These echo, nay, represent the chagrin and chafing that is now going on in the US State Department, unable to comprehend why Duterte is looking for new partners.
Second, this anger is aimed at influencing the Duterte presidency towards his original vision of the country. Remember Philippines 2000: a tiger economy growing faster than the rest of its neighbors under the benevolent protection of the US and her allies in the region.
Third, the tirade has strategic implications: if Duterte gets away with righting the ship of state but steering it to a new direction, then the influence of the US on all other nations in Asia will be suspect. These nations will certainly look at how this David called Rodrigo Duterte has slain the giant called US and EU. That is, of course, if he succeeds.
Beware, however, as the US has not yet shown its hand directly. It’s still busy with its equally contentious presidential elections. For the moment, Duterte, through Ramos, is just being warned. Alas, his silence does not assuage. It only deepens the American anxiety.
I have one piece of advice to all amid this impasse. Don’t forget your American English accent but also start learning Russian and Mandarin. The immediate future could go either way.