My days with FVR

On Monday, March 18, 2013, former President Fidel V. Ramos or “Tabako” to many of his friends and admirers, but always the boss to those people like me who worked with him as his personal staff, will be 85 years old, an age where most people would be enjoying retirement already.

FVR, however, is not showing any signs of slowing down. He writes a weekly column, travels abroad to deliver speeches, leads trade missions, plays his regular round of golf and goes to his office regularly where he still meets a lot of people. He maintains a punishing pace that would put a man half his age to shame.

I am not surprised at all. It has been that way since I had the opportunity to work with him as his senior military aide many years ago. A typical work day during my time as his aide normally starts very early. Since I did not have to fetch him at his residence except if there were appointments outside Camp Crame, I would be at the office well before 7:00 in morning reading the so called daily journal and newspapers. The daily journal is composed of unit or field reports of the previous day’s events. Then I made lots of telephone calls and made notations so that by the time he gets to office, I would be ready to brief him of the day’s events and the actions that had been taken or would be taken.

He got to his office before 8:00 o’clock and got to work right away. He took his first cup of coffee at this time and by the time the day was over, he would have taken so much coffee. At about 9:30, the conferences would start and then he met a lot of senior officers. Lunch would be cheeseburger — then we would go back to work. Sometimes, lunch would be at the pool where he would forget about work a bit and talk about anything.

He had athletics late in the afternoon, if the workload was light. Otherwise the day would end at about eight or nine in the evening.  There were many nights however, when I got a call from him to pick him up to go to Malacañang in the middle of the night. During weekends, I would be with him criss-crossing the country, staying in military camps instead of hotels. It was nonstop work that after about a year, he must have taken pity of me that we took a junior aide in the person of Sonny Razon who went on to become Chief of the PNP. During my time with him I did not see him take a break from work unless he was having dinner with his parents.

I was FVR’s aide during part of those turbulent and busy years of martial law. A period of our country’s history where a definitive history will still have to be written, in my opinion.  As a young officer in his formative years, I took that opportunity to learn as much I can. It is an experience I would not exchange for anything in the world.

I observed FVR and how he balanced managing and commanding the Constabulary and the Integrated National Police on one hand and the omnipresent politicians on the other. I was also a witness to some important and some curious events. One that has stuck in my mind was the death of the late General Bautista and his men in Patikul Sulu. His son is the current AFP Chief of Staff. We were with him early that morning and I can still see him waving at us on the ground while our helicopter was taking off.

I have often wondered what would have happened if he invited FVR and his entourage to go along with him to meet with Usman Sali. At that meeting, Usman Sali waylaid General Bautista and massacred him together with 43 other officers and men. He escaped to Sabah where he was given sanctuary.  He spent to rest of his life there if I am not mistaken.

Another curious incident was the late President Cory Aquino going to the office specifically looking for me to request for assistance. She was of course not yet President at that time. The other was a telephone debate that I had with the late Senator Ramon Mitra. I think this was during the Assembly elections of 1978.

I first heard of FVR from a relative who happens to have also graduated from West Point. And by the time I got into the service as a Lieutenant, he was already famous not only as a Korean and Vietnam War veteran but also as the founding father of the Philippine Army Special Forces, a unit many of us junior officers aspired for. He became a general at 43 and served as the longest Chief of the Philippine Constabulary.

I first came to his attention when I was also serving as an aide to one of his Deputies, the late General Cicero Campos. I would sometimes write or draft letters for him and since pelota was the craze at that time, I sometimes played the game with him. After my tour with General Campos, I was sent to Australia for several months for military training and when I came home after backpacking around Asia, I received a directive to report to the big boss as senior military aide. A lot of years have passed since my tour with him. Of course he went on to become the AFP Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense and eventually became President of the country.

When FVR was President, there were a lot of anecdotes and stories about his work habits especially from his civilian staff. The red and black sign pens that he always carried or the famous marginal notes written on newspapers reports that public officials would often receive and not to be forgotten, the completed staff work doctrine. It simply means that a paper that goes to him for his signature must be a product of a completed staff work so that all that he had to do was approve or disapprove. As President, he injected a sense of direction in the government bureaucracy. The battle cry was Philippines 2000. Fifteen years after his presidency, he still labors on promoting the country.

FVR has and is still giving so much of his time to the country.  I am sure he will do this for as long as he can. It’s just his nature.