Ramon Magsaysay: Man, myth and everything in between

Mambo mambo Magsaysay
Mambo mambo mabuhay
Our democracy will die
Kung wala si Magsaysay

I heard that tune over Radio Veritas (or was it Radyo Bandido?) one hot and humid February night. Hours before, my classmates and I were sheepishly, emptily dancing to Gazebo’s I Like Chopin when someone exclaimed that armageddon was unfurling on the crossroads of EDSA and Ortigas, near the camp where two defectors from the Marcos regime were holed up. Before that moment, politics – at least to me and my classmates – was nothing but rhetorical soup shared by the old folks in barbershops and seedy gin joints. But during the four days of the EDSA revolution, we teenage, hedonistic punks found it difficult not to care or, to be more precise, were jolted into caring since the stakes (our fate as a nation) were very high.

I remember hearing Mambo Magsaysay and wondering what a long dead president had to do with what was happening at that time. Then somehow, I realized why.

Reading entries in the history of Philippine politics is like reading characters and storylines from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic-realism. We had a president who kept a "golden" pisspot. Another one whose wife had innumerable pairs of shoes – one pair was even bedecked with jewels and expensive flashing lights which she used in fabulous suarees in the City of Man. (The two even sang Dahil Sa ‘Yo to epilogue the slow autumn of their dictatorship.) A gangster president, whose fat mistress maintained a swimming pool with ridiculous mechanical waves, threw eating, drinking and gambling binges in Malacañang that would make the Huns look like monks in comparison. All of them big, fat monuments of shamelessness.

Ramon Magsaysay was as fantastic, but not in the same sense as his predecessors and successors. The sobering unreality lies in his being a genuine man of the masses. How he was a man of integrity, honesty, selflessness and service. How he was the hero of the Filipino Everyman. And how his heart gravitated toward the poor, the dispossessed and the downtrodden.

"I believe that the little man is fundamentally entitled to a little more food in his stomach, a little more clothing on his back and little more roof over his head," was his credo, and in the brief three-and-a-half-years he was president (from 1954 to 1957), he saw to it that it was done – or at least attempted – with the inner fire of a missionary.

Isn’t that what the two EDSAs were all about, until greed and self-interest reared their glittering snouts in the pigsties of politics once again?

"Many people have already lost hope with our government, many people are leaving the country," observes Francisco "Paco" Magsaysay, grandson of the country’s most beloved president. "It is very important that people remember how Lolo conducted himself in office, his principles and his sacrifices."

His father, Senator Ramon "Jun" Magsaysay Jr., would tell stories about Ramon Sr. to emphasize the virtue of humility, honesty and selflessness, stories that come out like parables. Paco heard anecdotes in the unlikeliest places, from the unlikeliest people.

"I met an Indian guy who said he read a book about my lolo when he was 12 years old in India," he enthuses. Paco also went on a trip to a small town between Tacloban and Ormoc, and met the owners of a restaurant who shared a piece of Magsaysay legend. "One time daw, a person got sick in that town and there were no hospitals nearby. So Lolo went there in a helicopter and brought the person to a hospital."

There was a huge fire in Negros and the people were surprised when they saw the president walking in their midst. "He wasn’t with a cameraman. It wasn’t a photo opportunity. He just did things that he thought were right. He felt that the people needed to see him there to give them moral support," says Paco.

Ramon Magsaysay ate with farmers with his bare hands in frequent barrio trips not because he was politicking, but because he had to. RM knew that communing with the people would ease their burdens a bit. (Not like the former president who ate fried fish and tubig with farmers in the afternoon for the flashbulbs and spotlights; and lechon de leche and red wine with his sycophants inside the dimmed lights of plush Malacañang.)

In his book, My Guy Magsaysay, Jess Sison (a close-in reporter during RM’s presidency) recounts a slew of anecdotes about the late president. There was a time Magsaysay drank 7-Up with his staff in a sari-sari store in Tarlac, and insisted on paying for it just like an ordinary fellow. During a speech in Cabanatuan, there was a sudden downpour; the guy refused all offers of raincoats or umbrellas so he could be one with the drenched crowd. Magsaysay even refused to get credit for The Manila Pact (the forerunner of the SEATO) because it wasn’t his idea at all but President Quirino’s. (Something not normally done by publicity-grubbing solons with their sex goddess girlfriends.)

There was also a time he scolded the head of the Presidential Guard Battalion for refusing to let a contingent of Central Luzon farmers into Malacañang because it is "the Palace of the people." The late president once ordered a policeman to arrest his driver for beating a red light. Plus other fabulous facts.

"When my Tita Mila turned 18, nag-debut siya sa Malacañang. Lolo had the cost of the party deducted from his salary. It shows that for him, what is personal is personal and what is the government’s is the government’s," shares Paco. "Whenever I hear anecdotes about my lolo, it makes me closer to him in a way."

Ramon Magsaysay’s trips to the barrios, the quiet meals with farmers, the frequent visits to soldiers and Hukbalahaps may have ended on that fateful airplane crash on Mt. Manungal, but Paco says the spirit of selflessness and public service – exemplified by the late president – should live on.

"For Lolo, it was all tulong sa taong bayan, nothing more to it than that."

With that in mind, The Ramon Magsaysay Awards were established in 1957 to give accolades to greatness of spirit, the same sense of selfless service that ruled the life of the beloved leader. This year’s awardees include Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.; Dr. Ruth Pfau, a Catholic nun in Pakistan; Dr. Cynthia Maung, founder and head of the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand; Bharat Koirala, founder of the Nepal Press Institute; Sukho Choi (Venerable Pomnyun Snim), a Korean Buddhist monk; and Sandeep Pandey of Asha for Education in India.

The six awardees of 2002, who were honored yesterday at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, join the roster of 223 other laureates who have received Asia’s highest honor.

"These people are not the richest nor the most famous, but they’ve shown greatness of spirit by dedicating their lives to helping others," Paco muses. "Past winners include Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama. Just think how inspirational these people are. The awards are all about making people feel they can achieve anything. A small ounce of hope can mean so much."

If there was one politician right now with half of Magsaysay’s honesty and integrity (or if there were more people with the same selfless spirit displayed by the Magsaysay awardees), it would be enough to do the mambo for democracy all over again.