This career soldier, with a big cigar screwed between his teeth, had remained the last hero of People Power (“People power”) which brought Corazon (“Cory”) Aquino to power in February 1986. Even if he then defended, the general was quickly considered a potential successor to the president. He actually became so from 1992 to 1998. He died on Sunday July 31, at the age of 94.
From November 1988, General Fidel Ramos had become the most powerful figure in the Aquino government after the president. Minister of Defense, he also chaired the general military council, which made him a kind of deputy commander-in-chief of the armies, having, like the president, the power to mobilize troops.
Born on March 18, 1928 in the province of Pangasinan, in western Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, Fidel Ramos, who entered the military academy in 1947, was subsequently sent to that of West Point, in the United States -United. He made his debut during the Korean War (1950-1953) then, during the 1960s, he fought in Vietnam (notably during the Tet offensive in 1968). He obtained his rank of general in 1971.
A man of compromise
His rallying to Cory Aquino – in the company of Juan Ponce Enrile, then Minister of Defense – the day after the rigged elections of February 1986, was the event that determined the downfall of Ferdinand Marcos. Until then loyal to Marcos, the general commanded the gendarmerie. In office, Cory Aquino appointed him chief of staff.
Standing out by his calm and his not very expansive character in a country where theatrical attitudes are in order (a trait he perhaps inherited from his Protestant upbringing), General Ramos, faithful to the president, was no less became something of an arbiter within the ruling team, and Cory Aquino’s political survival depended largely on his loyalty.
A man of compromise, Fidel Ramos lost some of the confidence of the rebellious young officers of the Armed Forces Reform Movement that had led to the downfall of Marcos. However, he avoided to cut themselves off from them by being magnanimous towards putschists (the Aquino government was the victim of six coup attempts). A tolerance which was at the origin of the resignation, in January 1988, from the Minister of Defense who had succeeded Juan Ponce Enrile, General Rafael Ileto.
The country’s first Protestant president
Having become defense minister in his turn, General Ramos took the initiative, in December 1989, to ask the United States for air cover, when the most deadly putsch attempt against Mme Aquino was likely to succeed. After the failure of the coup d’etat, he was nonetheless criticized for not having known how to prevent it despite the warning signs.
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