ASIA : ‘Steady Eddie’ Keeps Moving on Philippine Problems

As usual, President Fidel V. Ramos was up at 4 a.m. and already chomping on his first thick cigar by 7 a.m. And as usual, he had stuffed spare stogies down his socks for the long day ahead.

The day--a typical one for this peripatetic president--included what initially appeared to be an assassination attempt. Ramos’ security guards grabbed a man who drew a .45-caliber pistol a few feet away from the passing president during his visit to this steamy provincial capital in southern Luzon.

Presidential spokesman Honesto Isleta downplayed the incident. The gunman was an aide to a local colonel and said he was returning the gun to his boss. Isleta said the previous night’s fracas was more worrisome. “One of the presidential security guards got a little tipsy and began firing his gun in the air,” Isleta said. “He was placed in the stockade.”

Ramos, 65, took it all in stride. As befits a longtime military officer known as “Steady Eddie,” he rarely has shown anger or excitement behind his silver-rimmed glasses since he took charge of this fractious society just over a year ago. Instead, he often appears a study in perpetual motion.

Ramos already has traveled to seven other Asian countries, seeking new investment and aid. And he has happily accepted President Clinton’s invitation for a working visit to Washington and several other American cities in November.

In an interview aboard his executive jet, Ramos said the departure of the last American troops from the Philippines last year created “the basis for a new relationship” with Washington based on trade and economic independence.

Indeed, he invited Americans to come back to the longtime U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay and the volcano-ravaged and badly looted Clark Air Base. “Why don’t they reinvest in Subic?” he asked, twirling his soggy cigar. “We’ll reopen Clark again soon. It’ll be a good buy.”

Despite the country’s problems, he said he hoped for a “meeting of minds” with the Clinton Administration. “The Philippine system is a democratic system, and the only model of its kind in Asia and the Pacific,” he said.

Critics say that may be just as well. The Philippine economy was second only to Japan in Asia three decades ago. It now staggers near the bottom. The economic growth rate was flat or declining the last two years, and current estimates are only marginally better, considering the country’s power crisis.

Over the last year, inadequate maintenance and poor planning have caused daily electric outages in the capital city of Manila and much of the country, costing billions of dollars in lost jobs and productivity. Ramos concedes now that he badly underestimated the problem when he took office. “It’s been the hardest thing, the energy problem,” he said.

Earlier, he had posed for cameras in a white hard hat at a geothermal power plant, which taps steam from deep in the Earth. Aides said the facility will begin generating 55 megawatts in August and 55 megawatts more in October, enough to restore nearly an hour of electricity a day.

Ramos, of course, will get public credit when the power finally comes back. Polls already show that the president, who won a seven-way race with barely 24% of the vote, has consolidated a broad political coalition in Congress and widespread public support.

One reason: Ramos has launched perhaps the first serious attempt to curb corruption in the scandal-plagued national police and military. And he has backed ambitious attempts to negotiate peace with longtime anti-government rebels, including Communist insurgents, right-wing military officers and Muslim separatists. Fighting around the country has decreased significantly.

Ramos often travels two or three times a week to the provinces. Here in the Bicol region, his party’s five helicopters clattered past the cloud-shrouded slopes of Mt. Mayon, a beautifully cone-shaped volcano that erupted earlier this year, over turquoise waters of the South China Sea and an emerald patchwork of paddy fields filled with rice seedlings.

Each trip is designed to raise his political profile and simultaneously lower public expectations. It’s not always easy. When he spoke for more than an hour at a crowded gymnasium in Sorsogon, his biggest applause came when he announced an $80,000 government grant to create a national park nearby.

“Do not think everything comes from the national government,” Ramos said, with a hint of exasperation. “You have something to do here yourselves. The national government is not some giant corporation that can take care of all your needs.”