Two leaders and the people they lead
Published Aug 7, 2019 12:07 am
THE LEGAL FRONT
By JUSTICE ART D. BRION (RET.)
Justice Art D. Brion (Ret.)
The last two elections blessed our country with two leaders whose governance approaches classify them under a different political mold. I refer to President Rodrigo Duterte (President Digong) and Mayor Francisco Domagoso (Mayor Isko) and their unorthodox ways.
Admittedly, they may not be the only ones out there with the same characteristic (other possibilities may be Mayors Vico Sotto and Sara Duterte), but I am focusing on these two leaders because of their high public profile and their capacity to affect the culture and beliefs of the Filipino people they lead.
President Digong, whose traits the country did not fully know at the start, surprised everyone when he disdained the approaches others before him had taken. People sat up and took notice when, among others, he took a different foreign relations approach.
From the start, he pointedly cultivated closer ties with China at the same time that he distanced himself from the United States, our traditional and long-time ally. He confronted no less than US President Barack Obama for uncalled -- for remarks about human rights in the Philippines. By these moves, he definitively signaled our intent to have an independent foreign policy.
Mayor Isko, now just a month old in office, is a politician who was a councilor and vice mayor before he became mayor. His public appearances show him to be a crowd pleaser who provides jokes that raise cackles from the audience. He does not pretend to be an intellectual who identifies problems and provides deeply-studied solutions. His, it seems, is the ready and practical approach that people understand and appreciate.
Many were surprised and elated when his first move as mayor was to address a Manila problem that had confounded others before him – the traffic, the dirt and the chaos of Divisoria and Quiapo. He cleared and cleaned Divisoria on his first day in office, and promised that these measures will happen in the whole of Manila. Manilans took notice.
I am tempted to say that only time and their determination will tell us whether their unusual and unexpected approaches would succeed. But, in addition to and beyond these determinants, is a variable - the Filipino and his mixed bag of traits. Our leaders will have to contend with them either as part of the problems or the solutions.
A reality we must understand is that a leader cannot exist in an ivory tower, dissociated from the people he governs; he needs the people he leads as badly as the people need him. One without the other, or without one complementing the other, leaves a gap that can only yield indeterminate results.
The Filipino, with his mixed traits, can also be an asset or a liability. We may be attractive in many ways as a people possessing more positive than negative traits. But our positive traits may be for naught if they are outweighed by the negatives; we can only win if we can reverse their relative weights.
One trait traditionally identified with Filipinos is their sense of “hiya” – the sense of shame instilled in us at our earliest age. Even as children, we have been cautioned to avoid disgracing ourselves and our families through improper actions before others. In fact, a common profanity is the pejorative term – “walang hiya” – to describe those who are shameless.
In recent times, this sense of “hiya” appears to have taken a vicious turn and, in the process, has lost its way. We turned from a shame-based society into one sadly lacking the sense of shame.
I focus on “hiya” as its absence carries profound effects on our governance. “Hiya” from our earliest days has always been one of the deterrents, wielded by the community, against corruption and other harmful wrongdoings.
The erosion of our sensitivity to community judgment is not an overnight development. It happened slowly, over time. Its root, in my view, is the materialism that we acquired as our personal lives increasingly became complex. Our brand of materialism, unfortunately, even surpassed our traditional respect for our community.
Corruption originated from innocent beginnings – from the view that no shame attaches to the acquisition of material things when we fight for survival. Over time, this recognition, coupled with materialism, metamorphosed into greed – the inordinate and consuming desire for material gains. From this point, it was not a big step towards corruption as our desire became an unbridled quest that disregarded even the law and our community’s adverse judgment on the means we use.
Thus, these days, to be charged with corruption or to be labeled as corrupt has practically ceased to be shameful. It is a brand that, over time, is lost in the community's short memory, or overcome by repeated claims of innocence and pretended acts of beneficence. Corruption, it seems, has become a forgettable offense; in the vernacular, “nakukuha sa paligo.”
Largely gone now is the response that a high government official (noted for his ideals and high minded character) once took when he was accused of corruption. The unproven charge alone appeared to have so affected him that he ended up taking his own life.
President Digong, to his credit, has been relentless in running against corrupt officials. He has acted swiftly and has fired more than a hundred government officials from office.
But despite this record, his efforts do not appear to have dented existing corruption nor have they left any significant mark in Philippine society. Nobody, it seems, has taken to heart the lessons he wishes to impart.
More than these, people are actively aware that corruption continues to be prevalent. They know that while dismissals may occur at the higher levels, the feast of greed continues below. A troubling aspect of this awareness is the President’s continued high satisfaction ratings despite people’s awareness of the pervasive corruption in their midst.
I can only explain this phenomenon in two ways. First, the ratings must be false, fixed, or flawed. Or second, if these ratings are true and accurate, then our people no longer consider corruption as a factor affecting their approval of the President; they now gloss over corruption, having accepted it as a way of life, an aberration that they adjust to and live with. Corruption, in other words, is now part of the normal.
This 2nd possibility, the more probable one, deeply troubles me; it means that corruption has now reached the level of a deep-seated negative trait that our governance has to address and reverse if we are to succeed as a nation.
From the SONA, I can sense that the President realizes that corruption is a national cancer that he must eradicate to achieve his dreams for the nation. But he can only do this if the people are there to help.
The President’s principal challenge – where his unorthodox ways can be an asset – is how to persuade, entice or push our people to change their mindset about corruption. For, only after such change will the people truly be there.
[email protected]
Justice Art D. Brion (Ret.)
The last two elections blessed our country with two leaders whose governance approaches classify them under a different political mold. I refer to President Rodrigo Duterte (President Digong) and Mayor Francisco Domagoso (Mayor Isko) and their unorthodox ways.
Admittedly, they may not be the only ones out there with the same characteristic (other possibilities may be Mayors Vico Sotto and Sara Duterte), but I am focusing on these two leaders because of their high public profile and their capacity to affect the culture and beliefs of the Filipino people they lead.
President Digong, whose traits the country did not fully know at the start, surprised everyone when he disdained the approaches others before him had taken. People sat up and took notice when, among others, he took a different foreign relations approach.
From the start, he pointedly cultivated closer ties with China at the same time that he distanced himself from the United States, our traditional and long-time ally. He confronted no less than US President Barack Obama for uncalled -- for remarks about human rights in the Philippines. By these moves, he definitively signaled our intent to have an independent foreign policy.
Mayor Isko, now just a month old in office, is a politician who was a councilor and vice mayor before he became mayor. His public appearances show him to be a crowd pleaser who provides jokes that raise cackles from the audience. He does not pretend to be an intellectual who identifies problems and provides deeply-studied solutions. His, it seems, is the ready and practical approach that people understand and appreciate.
Many were surprised and elated when his first move as mayor was to address a Manila problem that had confounded others before him – the traffic, the dirt and the chaos of Divisoria and Quiapo. He cleared and cleaned Divisoria on his first day in office, and promised that these measures will happen in the whole of Manila. Manilans took notice.
I am tempted to say that only time and their determination will tell us whether their unusual and unexpected approaches would succeed. But, in addition to and beyond these determinants, is a variable - the Filipino and his mixed bag of traits. Our leaders will have to contend with them either as part of the problems or the solutions.
A reality we must understand is that a leader cannot exist in an ivory tower, dissociated from the people he governs; he needs the people he leads as badly as the people need him. One without the other, or without one complementing the other, leaves a gap that can only yield indeterminate results.
The Filipino, with his mixed traits, can also be an asset or a liability. We may be attractive in many ways as a people possessing more positive than negative traits. But our positive traits may be for naught if they are outweighed by the negatives; we can only win if we can reverse their relative weights.
One trait traditionally identified with Filipinos is their sense of “hiya” – the sense of shame instilled in us at our earliest age. Even as children, we have been cautioned to avoid disgracing ourselves and our families through improper actions before others. In fact, a common profanity is the pejorative term – “walang hiya” – to describe those who are shameless.
In recent times, this sense of “hiya” appears to have taken a vicious turn and, in the process, has lost its way. We turned from a shame-based society into one sadly lacking the sense of shame.
I focus on “hiya” as its absence carries profound effects on our governance. “Hiya” from our earliest days has always been one of the deterrents, wielded by the community, against corruption and other harmful wrongdoings.
The erosion of our sensitivity to community judgment is not an overnight development. It happened slowly, over time. Its root, in my view, is the materialism that we acquired as our personal lives increasingly became complex. Our brand of materialism, unfortunately, even surpassed our traditional respect for our community.
Corruption originated from innocent beginnings – from the view that no shame attaches to the acquisition of material things when we fight for survival. Over time, this recognition, coupled with materialism, metamorphosed into greed – the inordinate and consuming desire for material gains. From this point, it was not a big step towards corruption as our desire became an unbridled quest that disregarded even the law and our community’s adverse judgment on the means we use.
Thus, these days, to be charged with corruption or to be labeled as corrupt has practically ceased to be shameful. It is a brand that, over time, is lost in the community's short memory, or overcome by repeated claims of innocence and pretended acts of beneficence. Corruption, it seems, has become a forgettable offense; in the vernacular, “nakukuha sa paligo.”
Largely gone now is the response that a high government official (noted for his ideals and high minded character) once took when he was accused of corruption. The unproven charge alone appeared to have so affected him that he ended up taking his own life.
President Digong, to his credit, has been relentless in running against corrupt officials. He has acted swiftly and has fired more than a hundred government officials from office.
But despite this record, his efforts do not appear to have dented existing corruption nor have they left any significant mark in Philippine society. Nobody, it seems, has taken to heart the lessons he wishes to impart.
More than these, people are actively aware that corruption continues to be prevalent. They know that while dismissals may occur at the higher levels, the feast of greed continues below. A troubling aspect of this awareness is the President’s continued high satisfaction ratings despite people’s awareness of the pervasive corruption in their midst.
I can only explain this phenomenon in two ways. First, the ratings must be false, fixed, or flawed. Or second, if these ratings are true and accurate, then our people no longer consider corruption as a factor affecting their approval of the President; they now gloss over corruption, having accepted it as a way of life, an aberration that they adjust to and live with. Corruption, in other words, is now part of the normal.
This 2nd possibility, the more probable one, deeply troubles me; it means that corruption has now reached the level of a deep-seated negative trait that our governance has to address and reverse if we are to succeed as a nation.
From the SONA, I can sense that the President realizes that corruption is a national cancer that he must eradicate to achieve his dreams for the nation. But he can only do this if the people are there to help.
The President’s principal challenge – where his unorthodox ways can be an asset – is how to persuade, entice or push our people to change their mindset about corruption. For, only after such change will the people truly be there.
[email protected]