He will be counted among the greats—but not for his consequential presidency. Published in Rappler on August 11, 2022.
The first Washington Post obituary on the late president Fidel V. Ramos, written by Philippine reporter Regine Cabato a few hours after his passing on July 31, concluded with an extended passage from a speech I had written almost a year ago. In it, I asserted before an online forum on presidential legacies that Ramos had "passed the test of time"—by which I meant history had established a firm enough foothold (or beachhead, to use a metaphor Ramos the soldier would have liked) on which to base a favorable judgment of him.
In the judgment of history, Ramos will be ranked among the great for his defense of the constitutional order. I had argued then: "There is no gainsaying his constitutional sense, and his fidelity to it. When I think of the possibilities open to him, during the era of the coup attempts, to choose the other side—which would have completely changed the country's history—I appreciate all the more that he knew his limits. Constitutionalism is, at its core, about a sense of limits."
Three moments defined Ramos' career, and character, as a constitutionalist.
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