I remember when Ernie Jazul, may his soul rest in peace, once asked me about how media can play a role to neutralize the boiling political situation in the country at the height of the Garci tape scandal. The situation is a stalemate and might lead to anarchy. The opposition have not attained the required number of votes for the articles of impeachment to reach the Senate. While the ultra-left were busy organizing series of protests to pressure another revolt, the ultra-right is espousing for a military junta. On the political scene, however, the legitimate successor in case of an abnormal transition of power, the Vice-President, remains loyal to the president while the Senate President stood behind the opposition. I told, Ernie: maybe former President Fidel V. Ramos has a better formula.
After sometime, it was in Pilipinas Ngayon Na’s show of Usec. Rivera that FVR first appeared to lay-out his proposal to amend the Constitution into a federal/parliamentary system and submit to the people directly the issue of whether the term of office of the President be shortened. This shifted public opinion and neutralizes the pressures from the center, the right and the left of our society that nearly erupted into chaos and anarchy. After I took pictures, His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos and I posed. He told me that Gen. Orlando Soriano, our administrator at NIA where I once served as Senior Executive Assistant is already well after suffering from mild sickness. The rest is history . . .
