BY SARA SOLIVEN DE GUZMAN: REMEMBERING A
BELOVED PRESIDENT
MANILA, MARCH
15,
2010 (STAR) AS A MATTER OF FACT By Sara Soliven De Guzman
- This Wednesday (March 17) is the 53rd death anniversary of Ramon del Fiero
Magsaysay – the 3rd President of the Republic of the Philippines. He was killed
with 25 others when the presidential plane crashed into a mountainside in Cebu
on March, 1957.
In contemporary politics and public service, Magsaysay is a distant national figure. Many of our public officials were not yet born or were mere infants when he was recruited from the House of Representatives where he was a neophyte congressman from Zambales. He was appointed by President Elpidio Quirino as Secretary of National Defense in August 1950 at the age of 43 and elected president in 1953 at age 46. My father was only 24 years old when he covered “Monching” (or “RM”) as Magsaysay was fondly called.
Ramon Magsaysay, the beloved great president and idol of the people came and went. His public service was very short compared to the 45-year service of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile.
As the Defense Secretary, RM turned the tide of the Communist rebellion in the country. As president he restored the trust of the Filipino people in their president and their government. He touched the hearts and minds of his people, like they have never been touched and moved before and even after his death. He threw open to the people the Gates of Malacañang. He was a showman supreme. But it was to show the people that he was the people’s President. He was firm, however, not a “give-away” President. He called on all to be their best and to do their best – and an inspired and admiring nation rose to his challenge. When will we see the likes of such a president again?
With the widespread venality in government that seems to have been institutionalized with tolerance if not presidential imprimatur, it is refreshing to reminisce on the virtues and character of Ramon Magsaysay and the Golden Era of his presidency.
Culled from two books – Ramon Magsaysay, by Jose V. Abueva who later became U.P. president and Magsaysay – The People’s President by Manuel F. Martinez who was the youngest delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention, are true stories about RM which portray a sharp contrast between this beloved president and those who succeeded him in Malacañang.
In the Magsaysay administration, there was no “Kamag-anak, Inc.” On many occasions, RM enjoined his close relatives to lay-off government agencies. When his own mother pleaded to him to help his brother, Genaro who had just passed the Bar exams, to open a law office, RM vehemently refused. He said a Magsaysay law firm will attract shadowy events because their lawyer is the president’s brother. When he heard that his sister (mother of Antonio Diaz) was in the war surplus business, he warned his nephew that the business must be legitimate, otherwise he would not hesitate to have it investigated.
The more known story in the business community at that time was that of RM’s uncle Ambrosio (brother of his father Don Exequiel) who had a contract for the shipping of coal for the government-owned Cebu Portland Cement Company. RM had the contract scrapped and dismissed the firm’s general manager. The contract was revived only after RM passed away.
When RM learned that his brothers, Jesus and Genaro organized a logging company that included as company directors his father and mother, he got very angry. “You even included our father and mother. Who would not assume that I am the mastermind,” he told his two brothers. RM ordered the company’s logging concession cancelled. At that time, logging was one of the most lucrative businesses in the country.
RM’s revulsion against graft and corruption was of public knowledge. On one occasion, while in his office in Malacañang and about to sign the papers for a contract, someone casually remarked that the president’s signature will mean campaign funds for RM’s Nacionalista Party in the forthcoming polls. Right then and there, RM withheld his signature. When he was Defense Secretary, a businessman who rode with RM in his car implied that he would share his profits from a deal with him. The businessman was told to get out of the car. A gold wristwatch from a party in a bidding was refused and a friend of RM who was requested to give the wristwatch was scolded.
RM refused to allow close kin to run for public office. He discouraged his younger brother Genaro from seeking a congressional seat in their home province of Zambales. In 1955, RM blocked his brother-in-law Feliciano de Gala from running for governor. It was only after RM passed away that his brother Genaro and his son Ramon Jr. entered politics. Contrast this to those whose close kin by blood and affinity are running for reelection as members of Congress today.
Unlike contemporary high officials who never punished or dismissed those involved in graft and corruption, but in fact even transferred them to better positions like a former NEDA official who is now a top SSS official, RM’s outbursts against erring officials was much feared.
Today, it seems that many public officials are unafraid of being sanctioned by Malacañang, what is worse is that they even behave like untouchables — immune from accountability for their crooked ways, profligacy and gross mismanagement of their offices. One office that is evidently immune from presidential discipline is the PCGG whose top officials have been investigated and recommended for prosecution by no less than the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.
With the presidential polls on May 10 just two months away, it may be good to recall the virtues of President Ramon Magsaysay and what he stood for – even if not one of those running for president can, even remotely, compare with him. One of the statements in RM’s presidential 10-point credo states: “ I believe that the President should set the example of a big heart, an honest mind, sound instincts, the virtue of healthy impatience, and an abiding love for the common man.”
In the words of my father, “ God, perhaps took away our most beloved President at the peak of his popularity and his powers, to teach us that we must all together, not relying on one hero, work out our salvation.”
RM did not die a rich man. Reports say that he left only P2,000 behind in a cabinet, one last paycheck (which his wife Luz, sentimentally never cashed) and some land in Zambales.
What the country most urgently needs is – for the trust of the Filipino people to be restored on their president and their government. At no other time in our country has trust and confidence in our national leaders been so destroyed by unabated stealing, blatant lying and cover-up of high level malfeasance thru executive privilege and callousness to public grievances.
In this day, when there is too much bickering on “pork barrel” and other multimillion-peso questions and scams, one longs for that yesteryear when we had a man like Magsaysay, adored and followed in spirit by almost everyone – but steadfast in integrity and strength of purpose to the very end. He had faith in the Filipino, and the Filipino had faith in him.