Privilege Speech of Deputy Speaker and Batangas Rep. Ralph G. Recto

01 August 2022

Mr. Speaker, my dear colleagues.

I join the nation in mourning the passing of a statesman who changed the course of our country and the lives of our people for the better.

President Ramos was brave in war,  industrious in work, visionary in public service, and helpful to his fellowmen.

He was the Steady Eddie who led by infectious and inspiring example, from the trenches of Korea, to the corridors of Malacanang.

Whether in the battlefield or in the bureaucracy, he was daring in deeds and bold in thinking. 

He was driven by this Protestant-Ilocano-West Point work ethic which ingrained in him the habit of rising before dawn, and toiling ‘til midnight. 

In all the offices he held, he was the first man in and the last man out of the office.

This is so because he demanded from the men he led the same discipline, thoroughness and punctuality that he imposed on himself. 

He was the mission-oriented commander who led from the front, never from the rear.

While in Malacanang, he directed  the war on many fronts – against poverty, against want, against illiteracy, against vested interests – with the most rudimentary of instruments: a pentel pen he used in scribbling off instructions and a milk box that was always full of documents which his aide lugged around. 

That box  was FVR’s version of the US president’s nuclear football. But his delivered a mightier payload.

 And in his hand, that pen was mightier than the sword.

He assumed office in the same year I joined the House – in 1992.

It was the time when the country was reeling from the devastation of Pinatubo and the Baguio earthquake, when protected interests crushed competition and denigrated public service, when civil strife from North to South, by the Left and by the Right, set back growth.

In many places, when you open the taps, there was no water. You try to catch a plane, there was none. You lift the phone, you get a busy signal. You switch on the lights, there was no power.

FVR ended the people’s misery by dismantling the protections which coddled monopolies, injected efficiency by bringing in competition, gave the consumer better and cheaper options, and levelled the playing field.

He was also a trailblazer in ending the multiple threats to democracy.

The paradox is that he was a warrior who trained in the best soldier’s school in the world, where he paid as tuition one of his kidneys.

So it came to pass that a man who was proficient in the art of war became a dogged peacemaker, who used diplomacy and democracy to forge peace settlements with those who sought change unconstitutionally.

With that came the expansion of democratic space, where one could  advocate contrarian ideas, without risk to one’s life, or being red-tagged. 

He valued and sought feedback, and the more brutal, the better. He was not a charter member of the Balat Sibuyas Club.

Among the beneficiaries of his peace offensive were the coup leaders he outsmarted, despite him being outgunned and outnumbered many times. 

Still, The Great Tabako smoked the peace pipe with them.

FVR was our ninong sa kasal. I remember him sweating beads in the jampacked Lipa Cathedral.

The gracious man that he was, he could have approved the PSG’s frantic call to cut an exit path for him. 

Instead, he patiently waited for his turn to leave, in order not to disturb the people who have been standing out in the open for hours, he said in true caballero fashion.

Vi and I will miss him, as do a nation and a people to whom he gave his all and his very best at all times.

Saludo, Mahal na  Pangulo! Maraming, maraming salamat po.