Empathy in short supply

Maybe being born rich is a big disadvantage for anyone who wants to lead a country that’s supposed to be democratic. I am not trying to start a class war here but just making an observation that keeps coming back over the last five years.

The thing about leading a democratic nation is that you must be able to feel the pains and struggles of the masa if you want to be a really good leader. That is more difficult than it looks. If you were born rich, you see ordinary folks as your sacadas or someone at your beck and call and not your equals.

My exposure to the masa came from the private medical practice of my mother who treated her patients from a clinic right in our house. We lived in the area of Paco and Pandacan where most of the residents live in shanty towns.

It was a tough neighborhood and I guess we survived only because the most notorious hoodlums were once upon a time babies and children whose lives were saved by my mom. I remember listening to the stories of their mothers as my mom attended to them. I heard stories about worrying for their next meal.

But that is not enough to really understand how our poor kababayans live. That was why my father insisted we would not be like our cousins who studied in the more fashionable expensive Catholic schools. In family reunions, I thought we were the poor relations.

I think about the poor in our old neighborhood every time a politician talks about anti-poverty programs in rather clinical terms. It occurs to me that many in public office today have no idea what they are talking about. There is no feeling, no empathy. Dealing with the common people, not necessarily poor, is just a job to many of them.

When I write about P-Noy and Mar Roxas being hacienderos and unable to empathize with the poor, I do not mean to blame them for the circumstances of their birth. I am just stating a matter of fact in much the same way that Christ once said it is impossible for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is all about attitude. It is about the environment that taught and reinforced that world view.

The best loved president of this country during his time was Ramon Magsaysay, an ordinary man many of us would even say was not qualified academically to be president. Diosdado Macapagal was once poor too, but by the time he became president, he had already become part of the elite and largely lost touch with his roots.

When Magsaysay died, I understand he did not even leave a house for his widow. Macapagal started living in Forbes Park after his term.

Among the current presidential contenders, only Jojo Binay can claim to having been once dirt poor. But the problem with Binay is that he has enjoyed the company of money for too long already so that it now defines him. A former Makati congressman who had gone with him around the city once observed that Binay is actually very anti-poor.

You should see how he shouts at them, insults them, castigates them, the former congressman said. But somehow the poor loves being treated like trash by Binay, he exclaimed.

So I am not sure how to think of Binay vis-à-vis his mindset on the poor. Is the poor merely a stepping stone for power? Or does he truly love the poor and is just giving them tough love? Who knows what is in the hearts of men.

Grace was a foundling, but grew up in a rich household, studied in Assumption no less. Perhaps, because the fortune of FPJ and Susan Roces depended on understanding the psyche of the poor, she inculcated something that gave her a heart that truly cares and understands the masa and their needs.

Mar Roxas had been struggling with how to identify with the poor. But the best efforts of his advertising gurus have been counterproductive so far. His packaging always turned out too artificial and even deepens the divide that separates him from the common man.

The most difficult quality to fake is empathy. It is a very human quality that one either has or doesn’t. It is a matter of EQ or emotional quotient. Not having it is not a bar to being elected president as P-Noy proved, but its absence makes it difficult to see things from the perspective of the governed.

Between P-Noy and Mar, Mar is more capable of showing empathy as he did during the wake for the Mamasapano police officers. P-Noy is a cold fish, unfeelingly self-centered and can, if at all, only have emotional ties with a close circle of family and friends.

The tanim bala crisis in the past week showed how the absence of empathy from this administration dragged a problem that could have been easily squelched. Self pity has unfortunately made this administration very defensive when criticized. That prevents them from seeing the problem and the solution from the perspective of the ordinary people affected by it.

My friend Sonny Coloma was the height of insensitivity the other Sunday when he pooh poohed the problem as not pervasive and out of context. DOTC Sec. Jun Abaya followed the same path and uttered statistics to show that reported incidents are less than one percent.

Neither Coloma nor Abaya thought that even one case out of tens of thousands of airport users is one case too many. Could it be because most of the victims are OFWs, below their social class?

Teddyboy Locsin got it right in his Teditorial over ANC. Government, he said, should be concerned about the fear and humiliation of a victim and stop this institutional terrorism. He added that to be detained in an airport is an unnerving experience. Abaya and his crew couldn’t see it from this perspective.

 Mar followed the “defend the government” mode in an ambush interview. The offending quote was later on declared as taken out of context, but the fact he said it at all – asking the victims to take responsibility for bullets found in their bags – is a mistake. It showed an inability to empathize with the victims.

Okay, he corrected it by saying the exact same thing I have been saying here, even one case is one case too many… and there is a need to go after the airport syndicate that Abaya insists does not exist.

In this age of social media, there is little or no chance to do damage control. The second Mar statement sounds like it was crafted by image makers for damage control. It is of almost no value. Candidates must be careful to get things right the first time.

Perhaps the image makers of Mar are digital immigrants like me who learned our craft in quieter times when there was just the 6 p.m. absolute deadline for newspapers and the evening newscast.

Today, with social media, good luck. Whatever is said gets everywhere within seconds. Netizens are quick to react and trolls are quick to create very damaging memes.

This is why it is important for a presidential candidate to have that elusive quality called empathy. Without it, they cannot get it right the first time.

Empathy enables one to see things from the perspective of the governed right away. I am amazed trained communicators like Coloma tend to think defensively of his boss rather than his boss’s bosses when he responds to issues.

I know Sonny and I know he is a sensitive and intelligent person and that makes me wonder what kind of water he has been drinking at the Palace to make him seem insensitive and bereft of empathy.

It is not just Sonny… Abaya and the rest of the Cabinet all sound like their boss after five years… cold and unfeeling. That explains too the first and supposedly out of context sound bite of Mar. And the refusal to even consider tax reform. 

Perhaps the rarified air of power also changes otherwise normally sensitive people who do have empathy and make them useless to help a boss who was not born with it. In the case of P-Noy, he is already handicapped by the nature of the social class to which he was born. His low EQ aggravates it.

I am trying to be more hopeful with Mar. Perhaps, Leni Robredo who has empathy with the masa can change him. Mar’s social detachment owing to his birth to the haciendero class can also be overcome, if he lets his natural sensitivity and empathy to reign.

But Mar must run on his own merits and stop being defensive of the last five years when empathy was in rather short supply in the administration he was a part of.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.