Remembering Pres. Ramon Magsaysay

Lest we have already forgotten, today is the 53rd death anniversary of Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, whose lumbering old Douglas C-47 “Dakota” twin-engine plane that was converted into a Presidential plane named Mt. Pinatubo crashed into Mt. Manunggal in the wee hours of dawning, killing all but one of the 26 passengers on board. The lone survivor was Herald newsman Nestor Mata who was seated in the row next to Pres. Magsaysay.

I will never forget the day when they brought the charred remains of the President as it was the first time I ever saw a helicopter, a Sikorsky S-55 “Chickasaw” that landed at the old Lahug Airport. For a six-year-old kid, seeing a whirlybird (this is what they used to call a helicopter in those days) amazed me so much, it really didn’t dawn on me that my father was there to mourn the death of his friend, the President of the Philippines.

Back in those days, Mt. Manunggal was practically inaccessible as there were no roads or trails that people could use. Just across this mountain was the headquarters of the Cebu Area Command (CAC) in Barangay Tabunan then under Col. James Cushing which was so deep in the mountains that the Japanese had difficulty finding it. Today, Mt. Manunggal can be visited by car, thanks to the Transcentral Highway and an asphalted road linking the main road to the crash site itself donated by then Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. and implemented by Balamban Mayor Alex Binghay.

Pres. Magsaysay’s death shocked the nation and from the reports I read, two million people lined up the streets of Manila for his funeral. For a country whose population in 1957 was barely over ten million, that was a lot of people who mourned the best President we’ve ever had. When will this country ever elect a President that we can be proud of and learn to love just like Pres. Magsaysay?

Well, elections will be held in two months. There is one amongst the Presidentiables who has followed the path of Pres. Magsaysay and he is former Defense Sec. Gilbert “GIBO” Teodoro Jr. Like Pres. Magsaysay, GIBO was also a Defense Secretary and he too is a staunch anti-communist and a friend of the United States. The GIBO volunteers strongly believe that he has all the traits of becoming a great leader for our country, which is why there are so many students volunteering for his cause.

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We have been publishing the surveys done by the Campaigns & Image Group (Phils) (CIG) three times already; finally, it made the national news because apparently the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) Chairperson Tita de Villa denied reports that they were doing the surveys. In the first place, nobody ever said that the PPCRV was doing the surveys. CIG clearly stated that they collated the survey with the help of PPCRV volunteers because they liked to help come up with a clear picture of the coming Presidential race. This was never sanctioned by PPCRV and CIG never made any claims that they were doing it for them.

Abbey Canturias issued a statement apologizing to PPCRV for the trouble they may have caused. The trouble stems from the spin doctors of the political camps whose Presidential candidates are fast declining. They say that the surveys of the Social Weather Station (SWS) and Pulse Asia are more credible than that of the CIG.

However, if you examined closely the results of the SWS and Plus Asia surveys, the Campaigns & Images Group came up with a clearer picture of the coming political exercise because they are able to break it down to the various voting sectors, the population by age groups and more importantly, they got a bigger sampling from 5,100 respondents as compared to the 1,200 that the SWS and Pulse Asia had been using. The CIG survey apparently show Noynoy Aquino declining steadily, while GIBO has overtaken him in the 3rd survey that was taken last Mar.7 and Sen. Manny Villar in the lead.

I was the first columnist to get hold of the CIG survey and published it here and in my Philippine Star column. We published the first survey at the end of January, the second one on the second week of February. Back then, there were no denials from the PPCRV, until the 3rd survey came out which showed GIBO overtaking Noynoy Aquino. Only then did the PPCRV come up with that denial in the hope perhaps to discredit this survey.

Pundits and other columnists have done their worse to discredit CIG, but to no avail, because that survey was the most credible survey done nationwide. It was done with the help of professional people. When the truth surfaces, you can never hide the truth by lies! So rather than waste time discrediting the CIG survey, these Presidentiables should campaign harder.