I FIND it most excruciating watching former President Fidel V. Ramos nurse ill feelings against incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte and raising the crescendo of his criticism against his protégé at a time when his support is most expected and needed.
I really do not know where his childish sentiment is coming from so I find it quite pathetic that he aims his turrets at Duterte when he is supposed to shield him from the attacks from domestic and foreign detractors.
Here is FVR joining the fray belittling the President achievements in his first 100 days in office while the majority gives Duterte the thumbs up… or, to borrow the language of FVR himself, “kaya natin ito”.
Reading between the lines in his column in one of the national dailies, Ramos compared the Philippines to a ship that is full of holes which need to be plugged and that Duterte cannot do it alone. This simply indicates that Ramos expected that he ought to be consulted in the affairs of government and maybe faulted Duterte for not doing so.
That does not however give him the license to judge Digong in his first 100 days in office. But behind his sore and sour griping at this time when the President is to engage China President Xi Jinping in bilateral talks emergies FVR’s own failure of delivering something tangible when he was assigned as special envoy to China to pave the way for viable solutions and area of cooperation between the two countries over the territorial claims of the Scarborough.
I hate to say this to a former President whom I looked up to with esteem, but it’s like a search through a haystack as I tried to recall what workable diplomatic achievement had he accomplished as envoy.
Frankly, I expected that at the very least, he could have swayed China leadership not to harass our poor fishermen from the fishing around the Scarborough atoll. This did not happen. Why? Because FVR went to Hong Kong, talked with officials of the Special Regional government of HK who, I would surmise, do not even have the heart to bring the issue to the Peoples Hall in Beijing.
Now, Duterte, himself, has taken the silk route to China meeting with President Xi Jinping who is as confident as the Filipino leader that their first bilateral engagement will yield results beyond the expectations of the skeptics, FVR included.
The war on drugs waged by Duterte by a blitzkrieg is winning in all fronts. The dividends translate to a peaceful environment and healthy climate for investments.
True, there was flight of the dollar which critics attribute to the gutter language of Duterte. But those comments are the ways of the incorrigible anti-Duterte critics and paid hacks in conjunction with the opposition propagandists based in the US of A.
Truth is, the dollar appreciated in mainland America so the hot money investors, as it was in the past wherever they park their monies for profit, are magnetized by that opportunity to gain. It would have been different if capitalists with investments in manufacturing and services liquidate their assets then pack up and leave. But then look again dollar remittance just made a dramatic increase.
The Ramos administration has its onus of corruption records and fatal failures. But Filipinos buried these in the catacomb of forgetfulness knowing his principal participation in People Power revolt and having inherited a government from Cory which was as popular as its inefficiency and its own acts of human rights violations.
Ramos literally saved Metro Manila from the scourge of total darkness.
Suddenly, there was light but not a few became multi-billionaires from the onerous independent power supply contracts which people have to bear to this day. Then there were more.
For all his faults, I want to remember FVR as a leader who saved the country from further erosion after the Aquino regime and that iconic jump in the stage at Edsa.
I do not wish to dilute this with a picture of a man approaching senility and who still thinks that a West Pointer graduate who became president by the skin of his teeth is a better leader than a Mayor of Davao who won by a landslide.
rI want to see FVR tapping Digong’s knee each time he ejaculates with expletives but to never ever deter his protégé from taking another course where angels and traditional leaders like him (FVR) fear to tread.