FIDEL V. RAMOS Photo by Lilen Uy

FROM HIS 26th floor office in a Makati high-rise, former President Fidel Ramos can point to the reasons why there should not be another People Power.

To the west, one can see modern structures rising from the land reclaimed from the Manila Bay. On the other side are shanties of the poor of Makati.

"We are not moving fast enough," he says, obviously unimpressed with the 4.9-percent growth the Arroyo administration has been bandying about. "We need six to eight percent every year in GDP for the next 10 to 12 years if those poor people in those slums down there are to be uplifted and not just the rich people. That's what it takes in the economy. The people are tired of constant political bickering and they want to carry on with their lives."

"People Power in the present time is not relevant anymore," says the man who 20 years ago led the bloodless revolution that inspired other people power revolts around the world.

And so at the height of the "Hello, Garci" scandal last year, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo seemed to be at her most vulnerable, Ramos rushed in, not as leader of hordes of protesters, but as the man with The Plan: charter change. Yet it was more his support of the president and not the plan that appeared to have helped salvage Arroyo's then-sinking ship, which, though more stable now, still has to navigate rough political waters.

Since 1986, Ramos has become the person who tilted the balance in the constantly shaky world of Philippine politics. In fact, in the past two decades, the ship of state rocked the least during his administration. So far, Ramos has been the most capable of all the post-Edsa presidents, although he, too, was unable to dodge charges of corruption (think PEA-Amari and the Centennial Expo fiascos). Ramos may keep his cards close to his chest, but there is no doubt he plays them very well. A minority president, he managed to cobble together a coalition that helped him in his quest to even the economic playing field and liberalize the telecommunications, banking, and shipping industries. He may not have been able to reform the entire economy, but he certainly made it more efficient.

It is probably no surprise that he hasn't been exactly twiddling his thumbs after his term in Malacañang ended in 1998. This is, after all, one soldier that will not just fade away. The golf course beckons from time to time, but for Ramos, there is life even in retirement, and it means helping to chart the course of the country, for better or for worse.

IT ISN'T clear yet to which direction his "rescue" of Arroyo has taken the nation. But for sure the current political unrest lacks many elements of Edsa 1. Still absent from the convergence of anti-government forces so far is the involvement of significant elements of the military and the Philippine National Police.

Those were the forces that Ramos had marshalled during the historic four days of February 1986. At that time, Ramos was chief of the Philippine Constabulary, director-general of its sister organization, the Integrated National Police, and Armed Forces vice chief of staff.

But Ramos was not really in the original group of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile that had been mapping out a coup d'etat against Ferdinand Marcos as early as 1982. The general was in his home in upscale Ayala Alabang, talking to a group of Cory crusaders when he got the invitation to join the rebellion at about 2:30 in the afternoon of Feb. 22, a Saturday. Using a circuitous route to avoid detention, he got to Camp Aguinaldo at six p.m., just in time for a press conference announcing his and Enrile's withdrawal of support from the Marcos government.

Ramos says when he bade his wife Amelita goodbye to join Enrile, "I was prepared to die." He gave her instructions to escape with the whole family in case the revolt failed.

Ramos recounts that Enrile divided the chores. "He did the political work and the relations with the civilians including contacts with Malacañang," he says. "I assumed responsibility for the military and the police operations."

Like commanding troops in a battle, the West Point-trained general communicated with his men in the field while working on the hearts and minds of the civilian population and making moves to confuse the enemy. Throughout the night of Feb. 22, he would get out from his Camp Crame headquarters to appear at the gathering crowd at Edsa, updating them of the latest defection-some of them true, some deliberately false. "Sometimes," he says, "we went jogging just to multiply our presence, to be in many places for a short span of time."

His instructions to his 12 regional commanders were: "organize a reserve and assemble them in one place. I will call on you to move them when the time comes. But in the meantime, do your job as law enforcers. Preserve peace and order in your respective community. Protect the civilians and spread the word. Keep abreast of the situation. Coordinate with each other."

Some strictly followed instructions, some got overexcited. Ramos relates the case of then Brig. Gen. Renato de Villa who was in charge of the Bicol region, who, per instructions, quietly moved a battalion-size reserve to Naga, near the airport. There it waited for deployment to Manila, just in case Ramos and Enrile needed reinforcement.

In contrast, Brig. Gen. Rodrigo Gutang, commander of Region 12 in Parang, Maguindanao, couldn't wait to be called. In his eagerness, he hijacked a PAL plane at Awang, Cotabato. He pointed a gun at the pilots, loaded some 120 people on the aircraft, and had it flown to Manila. Gutang and his men found Philippine Air Force Chief Vicente Piccio waiting to arrest them as soon as the plane landed.

By mid-morning of Feb. 24, after the dramatic defection of the Col. Antonio Sotelo of the 15th Strike Wing, which many consider the turning point of the military revolt, Ramos got the unexpected news that Marcos had abandoned Malacañang. The cigar-chomping general immediately went to the crowd that had gathered in front of Camp Crame and announced the good news, jumping with joy to the jubilation of the public.

It turned out that that news was premature by at least a day. Nevertheless, that Edsa jump became a Ramos trademark and was used extensively during his presidential campaign in 1992.