TRIBUTE: FVR built piece by piece the support and advocacy for peace and development in Mindanao
(Paul G. Dominguez, Presidential Assistant for Mindanao during the Ramos administration was among those who delivered tributes to the late President Fidel Valdez Ramos on 8 August 2022 at the Heritage Park in Taguig City).
So much has been said over the last few days about FVR’s dedication, discipline, his work ethic. I had the distinct privilege of working directly with him for six years and tonight I will speak of FVR’s purposefulness and skills as a leader and I will narrate a few incidents, a few direct experiences I had with him that clearly demonstrated his extraordinary level of not just dedication but skills.
I didn’t have a long personal history with FVR. I believe I met him very casually before when he was PC/INP (Philippine Constabulary/Integrated National Police) chief. During EDSA, I conveyed a few messages back and forth from friends who were in EDSA and I was in Davao. It was my brother Sonny who was his colleague during the administration of President Cory and who also lived very close to him in Alabang.
tribute to the late President Fidel V. Ramos on 8 August 2022 at the Heritage Park in Taguig City.
Screengrab from RPDev
After EDSA, I had two or three meetings with him because I was asked to do some back channeling work with the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) leadership that was quite upset with the early days of the Cory administration, and I remember reporting to the officials in Malacanang, primarily him, on the conversations we’ve had which we were trying to stabilize the situation with the MILF.
I helped out a little bit in the presidential campaign and in the vote count and right after the elections, we had a dinner in my brother’s house in Alabang in which we invited some Mindanao officials. That was the total sum of my interactions with the President.
Shortly after June 30, I think it was the first, 3rd or 4th of July I was traveling to, of all places, in Sarawak and as I returned to the hotel I got this frantic message from my wife. “Your name is on the front pages, please call.”
I had been appointed, without my knowledge, to be the President’s Assistant for Mindanao. The first person I called was my brother Sonny and I said, “you know anything about it?” and he said “yes I do, I already accepted for you” and he said “Eddie is looking for you, where are you?”
“I’m in Sarawak. I’ll be back I think 6th or 7th of July.” So I reported immediately to him (FVR). I had this first extraordinary meeting. He said: “Well, I want you to be my personal representative in Mindanao. You need to become a government official because I will vest you with authority over all national government officials in Mindanao with the exception of elected officials” and he asked me “how do you think Mindanao should move forward?”
I gave him a few ideas in terms of what better infrastructure we needed, the importance of peace and development because that was the main limiting factor to Mindanao’s development and the need for refreshing Mindanao’s identity. He said “that’s all good ideas etc. Go to work. I will go to Davao on the 15th of July and swear you in. And then I asked him “Sir, what are your marching orders?”
He looked at me straight in the eye and said, “Paul, we will remain in a campaign mode for the next six months.”
I said, “Sir, the elections are over.” He said, “yeah I know, but we will continue the campaign for the next six months.”
So we went to work not only for Mindanao but all over the country, organized endless consultations involving thousands of people in gyms and a number of you were there, with the entire Cabinet in attendance, listening to petitions, acting on what to be acted upon, giving instructions. These sessions were two, three hours long, four hours long. A lot of it involved listening and I handled about six or eight visits to Mindanao for the next six months.
The President was every weekend out in the field continuing the campaign and remember this was the period of time when we had no emails, no cellphones, no social media. Everything was created, everything was done with body language and messaging, personal messaging.
After six months, I believe in early January or February (1993), we received a briefing by SWS (Social Weather Stations) and I’ll never forget that. We were in a Cabinet meeting. JoMag was there. Raffy was there. I believe Bobby De Ocampo was there and Pepe Miranda who was giving the briefing said in his most serious tone: “Mister President, I would like to report you that over 50% of those we surveyed said they voted for you.”
Remember FVR only attained 23.6% of the votes (in the May 1992 Presidential election). After six months, the public said that over 50% I think close to 60% said they voted for him and Mr. Miranda looked at him direct and said: “Mr. President I have never seen this happen before but you have modified the collective memory of this country.”
And he sat back with a big smile and he said: “Gentlemen, the first strategic objective is achieved. Now we pursue the reform agenda at full force” and that’s when Joe Almonte and Tony Carpio started writing all of those memos opening up the economy that the Ayalas mentioned earlier today. But the first mandate in the strategic objective in the first six months was strengthen the mandate and we brought this up to over 50% and higher until the unfortunate Flor Contemplacion incident in mid 1995.
The second incident I will recall and relate to you which again just shows not just the skill but the audacity of the President, was when I went on the first state visit to Malaysia 1993 in January. Now for those who recall and Ambassador Delia Albert is here, our relationship with Malaysia in 1993 was not good. No Philippine President had made a state visit to Malaysia in 30 years, between 1963 and 1993 as a result of the strain due to the Sabah issue. So I was asked to join the meeting because we had an initiative to normalize the border relations. Most of the Cabinet was there. They were all preparing for the bilateral meetings, very tentative because we did not know what the relationship was.
FVR, I believe, like 20 minutes before the meeting started, asked for a four eyes meeting with Mahathir. Four eyes, meaning just the two of them, and everybody else sat on the outside, no conversation. We were just having coffee and that four eyes meeting lasted two hours so after which there was no more time for any bilaterals and he came back to Carcosa, which was the guest house and he had all of the notes written on the back of his onion skin schedule, those of you who worked with him, he had this thick band of onion skin, and he said, “Okay this is what happened, 1 2 3 4 5. These are all your instructions. With a very good meeting, there will be no more bilateral meetings. Our agenda is finished with the (Prime Minister) Mahatir. He has agreed to look into the possibility of normalizing the border relations with the special growth area.”
We were all shocked. And then I asked him, “Sir, what are your marching orders?”
He said, “okay keep the interest of Malaysia high. Make sure it works out and immediately travel to Indonesia and Brunei and persuade them to join and when you go to Indonesia, ask Joe Magno to go with you because Joe had gone to school and advanced general staff college in Indonesia, he knew a lot of people.
We visited Governor Rantung, visited his old friends. And that visit was very important because immediately they agreed to go along because the relationship with Indonesia and Malaysia at that time, even then, were not that good, but you know. Next to FVR, Joe was my most important member, but that’s how it happened. But it all started with an audacious move to engage Mahathir directly, four eyes, just the two of them, no note takers or anything, and that completely reset the relationship with the Malaysians to the point they became our principal support group for the conversations and eventual negotiations with the MILF 15 to 20 years later. But that was, that required great audacity and personal diplomacy.
The next incident that I will relate, the next two incidents involve security. The next incident was the raid in Ipil in April in 1995. I don’t know how many of you remember that, but several hundred young men from Basilan moved in boats and attacked the town of Ipil in early morning, killed over 50 people, burned the market, attacked all the banks, took hostages and devastated the largest city in the middle part of Zamboanga. It was a terrible, terrible incident. I was there the day after with a small team to try to stabilize the situation. President Ramos arrived about two days later and immediately talked to the local people to ensure that this conflict would not escalate.
And then as he was leaving, he asked me to join him to go back to Zamboanga which was quite unusual because I would normally always stay behind to carry out what he wanted me to do. He said, “No, no you come with me.”
When we got in the helicopter, you know I never sat on the front row next to the pilots, I was always in the back. He said, “No, no you come here sit next to me. I have something to tell you” and in the short flight between Ipil and Zamboanga City which took about 25 minutes, he turned to me and he said, “go and organize peace and development summits in every major city in the next six months.” He said “the objective of this Ipil raid was to destroy our peace initiatives with the MNLF. We will not allow that. Go and organize these peace and development summits in every major city in Mindanao, bringing together the leadership of the Mindanao community and invite the MNLF leaders to participate.”
So we went out and did this over the next six months and FVR did not only attend them, he normally gave the opening remarks, stayed the entire conference, sat in on a number of the workshops, received the outputs of every single conference in six months and in so doing, not only wiped out the impact of the Ipil raid but piece by piece built up the support and advocacy for peace and development in Mindanao in spite of that terrible effort to derail it.
So you could see that as soon as he arrived, he saw exactly what the message of that Ipil raid was and he immediately undertook the strategy to confront it and not only confront it but to build the advocacy for peace and development and personally invested his time there and when people saw that and remember this was 1995, this was already the third year of his presidency, when the community saw that personal investment that he was making in peace and development, it worked. And again that required not just dedication and discipline but it required a high level of skill that I don’t think we have seen in any President since then.
The last incident I will relate is something again that I will never forget. Sometime in 1996, I believe, after a Cabinet meeting, the aide called me and said the President wants to see you. I walked into his small study and Secretary (Renato) de Villa was there and he said “Gentlemen, I have agreed for the military to conduct a police action in this specific barangay in Pikit-Pagalungan border in North Cotabato-Maguindanao. This barangay is the birthplace of Hashim Salamat of the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front).
We understand that there are bandits that are using the place as an area for hostages so the military wants to undertake a police action and then he turned to me and said “Okay, I have given the military three days to undertake this operation. After three days, Paul, you go there with your team to restore and repair everything that is damaged by this operation.”
This conversation was taking place five days before the operation. He knew what was going to happen, he anticipated the consequences, he wanted the consequences managed and so the operation happened.
Three days later, I arrived with a whole busload of staff and people from DepEd, from DPWH, from all the infrastructure departments who walked in, surveyed everything that the military had disturbed and destroyed, the schoolhouses had holes in the roofs etc. and we rebuilt everything in two month’s time. Better than what it was started and that sent a strong message again to the community that while we are sensitive to the historical importance of this place, we will not stand for breaking the law, but we are not here to cause permanent injury to anybody.
Again, you would never expect, I would never have expected the President to have that kind of assessment and analysis and that is nothing but, you know, the total putting together of his skill, his purposefulness, his strategic thinking, his dedication, his discipline, his craftsmanship at leadership and I think that that is something that has not been probably sufficiently discussed.
President Ramos presided over a team that had a military cadence to it. (Joe is laughing). Every Tuesday morning, you had cluster meetings. Tuesday afternoons we had whole afternoons of Cabinet meetings. Wednesday after lunch was the press briefing. Weekends it was visit to the provinces.
Six years of that in almost a predictable cadence and the Philippine situation turned around.
To sum it all, this was the magnetism of the individual that so much so that even after his term was done, every time he called, all of us showed up. Raffy, Bobby, Joe. Everybody showed up not only to honor him but every time he called, we knew there was something, there was a serious purpose whether it was a forum, whether it was to greet the new President of Indonesia.
But his commitment to the country, to helping the country never, never diminished.
And it was a great privilege to have worked with him. Thank you.
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