Where there’s smoke, there’s FVR

Former President Fidel V. Ramos (FVR) has no reason to complain that many people, both in the opposition and in the administration, including those in Malacanang Palace, look at him with suspicion. No amount of denials by FVR, who makes no bones about his being a psy-war expert, can and will ever assuage doubting Thomases on his ulterior motives for his continued meddling into the affairs of the Presidency.

FVR took pains to explain anew the latest scuttlebutts that started with his supposed "secret" meeting with Senate President Franklin Drilon and former Sen. Vicente "Tito" Sotto last Jan. 2 at his office in RPDev at the Export and Industry Bank Plaza in Gil Puyat and Chino Roces Streets in Makati City. He called a full-blown press conference last Monday at the same office, located at the 26th floor of the building, to clear the air, so to speak. No pun intended for Sotto who used to be one of the regular golfmates of FVR until the former Senator allied himself with deposed President Joseph Estrada.

A popular idiomatic expression says "where there is smoke, there is fire." In this case, where there is smoke, there is FVR. While he no longer smokes tobacco, FVR’s love for smoking cigar earned him the monicker "Tabako," a name he is called by his admirers and foes as well.

"They call me Tabako. But I have a better nickname," FVR quipped, referring to his pet name "Eddie" as he is fondly called by his former peers in the military. "I’m marketing our Philippine cigar because they’re more affordable and they’re non-communist," he wisecracked alluding to the Havana cigars that his namesake Cuban President Fidel Castro smokes. Castro, by the way, is one of the longest serving living dictators still in power in Cuba, a country that remains under communist rule.

FVR, who is turning 78 years old this March, has been reduced though to just chewing tobacco. For one who had covered FVR during his watch at the Palace from June 1992 to June 1998, I have sort of found a way to detect whether the former President was agitated or irritated whenever we had our regular Wednesday late afternoon press conferences at the Palace. A sure gauge I got to know the temper of FVR during those times was when his chomping of his cigar would wildly go from left to right, right to left in his mouth. In fact, I have for FVR souvenirs, three of his tobacco cigars emblazoned with presidential seal that the former President used to give away and include among the items he put in time capsules buried in groundbreaking rites of projects started during his term.

Now out of power for the past seven years, FVR has consistently disavowed any supposed ambition to return to power via Charter change (Cha-cha) initiatives that have been earnestly pursued by his loyal supporters and those pursuing amendments of the country’s 1987 Constitution.

Well, of course, there are basis for these suspicions on FVR. No one, not even FVR himself, can refute the fact he was chief participant and plotter in the two EDSA People Power revolutions, one in February 1986 and the other in January 2000 that ousted two sitting Presidents from their respective offices at the Palace.

In his press conference last Monday, FVR reiterated his challenge to President Arroyo to make the "ultimate sacrifice" as the only way to restore the political stability of the country after the "Hello Garci" scandal. Even after her allies in Congress have successfully "killed" the impeachment proceedings against Mrs. Arroyo, FVR maintains that this scandal had seriously impugned the leadership of Mrs. Arroyo because there was no closure of this controversy on the alleged fraud-tainted results of the May 10 2004 presidential elections.

Giving a deadline for President Arroyo to cut short her term, at the latest in January 2007, is reminiscent of the similar ultimatum that FVR gave to then President Estrada to step down at the height of the protest rallies in 1999 before the latter’s impeachment in the Senate was railroaded.

Actually, FVR was just being consistent with his previous conditional support to the embattled administration in July last year when he parted ways with former President Corazon Aquino who joined Drilon in the resignation calls against President Arroyo. In fairness to FVR, he actually extended this timeline from his original demand for Mrs. Arroyo to put into motion Cha-cha that will pave the way for the setting of elections for the new parliamentary government by June 2006. The new timeline, if you notice, coincides with the sixth year into office of President Arroyo from the first time she took office after EDSA-2 in January 2000.

If FVR failed to extend his term a day longer when he first pushed Cha-cha during his watch, he is just making sure nobody else does it, not even President Arroyo who will be able to serve for 10 years if she completes her term up to June 2010.

The words of the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople were prophetic when he staunchly opposed FVR’s Cha-cha when he was still at the Senate during those days. The Senate staff of Ople collected a number of articles he wrote from 1990 to 1997 which appeared in various publications concerning attempts to change the Constitution. Ople was one of the 48 men and women appointed by Mrs. Aquino who drafted the 1987 Constitution. These collection of Ople’s articles were turned into a booklet entitled "The Plot Against the Constitution, The Ramos Conspiracy."

In the author’s Preface of his 88-page booklet, Ople wrote: "The collections shows that I was one of the first among public figures to warn the nation against the plot to change the Constitution so that President Ramos and his cohorts can stay in power beyond their allotted terms."

During those times also, Ople further warned about the "sordid conspiracy between the President (Ramos) and congressional henchmen" in their mobilization and uniting the "moral forces of the nation into a flood that will sweep them into power." Is this a case of déjà vu?

Ople echoed these warnings when Mrs. Arroyo was among those Senators with him who successfully blocked and stopped dead on their track FVR and his Cha-cha men. It was during those anti-Cha-cha protest rallies when we last saw together the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, with Mrs. Aquino, then Vice President Estrada, Senator Macapagal-Arroyo, and Ople fighting a common cause. With Ople and Cardinal Sin out of the picture, President Arroyo found herself in agreement in principle with FVR on Cha-cha. But when to carry it out, that’s the question.

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