By Col Dencio S Acop (Ret), PhD
It is the election season once more and so many aspiring individuals have signified their intention to run for public office. This is great. It is a clear sign that our democracy is very much alive. But also maybe not once we zero in on the qualifications of each candidate relative to the demands of public office and the common good. The listed qualifications for one seeking even the highest office in the land are scant and assume that the candidates and the voting public are responsible enough to discern who are serious and deserving candidates. Unfortunately, this is far from reality as every Tomas, Dante, and Juan think he can be the national leader and the voting public also appear to care more about mere affinity to a candidate than the common good. I am at all not a fan of the constitutional provision that allows for a plurality instead of a majority of votes to win the presidency. Divided as Filipinos already are culturally, this erroneous provision has exacerbated this flaw which also allows for more electoral cheating as fewer votes are needed to rig an election.
But I really want to focus more on what really is the kind of leaders the country needs. I argue that we need leaders of character, period. If you look around our political landscape before and now, you will find all kinds of leaders who have had their chance at leading us Filipinos supposedly to a better kind of life. Some are intellectually brilliant with summas and PhDs like Marcos and Arroyo. Other names who fall under this category include Enrile, Zamora, and others whom you probably know better than me. Others have been not as brilliant but merely popular like Estrada, Lapid, Pacquiao, Revilla, and again others you probably know more of than me. Yet others have come from simple backgrounds like Pacquiao, Estrada, Duterte, Moreno, and others you are more familiar with. Others were members of the political elite which is very common in this country of political dynasties: Macapagal-Arroyo, Aquino, Ramos, Marcos, and many among the incumbents across the political geography. The point I am trying to make is that the major ills of our country remain despite all the different kinds of leaders we have had in the past? Why is that? Gone is the thesis which claimed that if only we had non-elites ruling the land then we would be better off or if only we had brilliant leaders then we would be alright. The same problems remain regardless of who sat in power: worsening corruption, social injustice, political instability, unstable economy, decadent morals, etc.
Except for one or two among the leaders we have had, I argue that most leaders who ruled this land of ours were not leaders of character. Whether they were presidents, senators, congressmen, or other political officials and bureaucrats, many eventually chose vested interests over the national interest which is the common good. It is not entirely the accountability of these leaders though. Half of the accountability also goes to the electorate which does not possess the wherewithal to choose leaders based on what they can do for the common good and not just for them in a selfish kind of way. The reality we are in today politically also manifests in no unclear terms the fact that our values, Christian nation or not, are as confused as we are. We no longer know black from white, right from wrong. We are as gray as much of the world we live in. We ourselves have ceased to be men and women of character, thus our inability to choose leaders of character.