Making the right choice should be our aspiration, but its meaning has been polluted in recent months, enveloped in the contentious battles over issues and political products, making us choose among competing platforms, campaign promises, and varying personalities. Good versus evil. Experience, good or bad, versus the lack of it. Popularity versus qualification.
As we go to our respective polling precincts, our minds are preoccupied with the troubling thought of continuing to live in difficult and dangerous circumstances. And in these times of anxiety, amid bewildering challenges, lost opportunities, and unabated fears, our collective wish is to have a rekindling of our core belief that we Filipinos are beacons to our own distressed country. We are far from where we should have been, and where we should be headed. And the battle for prosperity in all aspects of our lives remains to be a primordial concern.
At the start of the political campaign, we are always reminded to be faithful to God and people as we participate in any form of political involvement. Every election gives us the opportunity to discuss the ways our government leaders should lead us now and into the future, with the promotion of the common good as the primary goal. Whoever we choose and eventually whoever wins to lead this country should be able to provide answers to the general cry for a life with dignity for all – street children, indigenous people, powerless men and women, overseas Filipino workers, the young who are deprived of opportunity, the old, others who suffer from any form of marginalization, and the rich and the poor.
Dignity is the quality of being worthy or honorable which human beings uniquely possess. It’s not that all human actions are morally praiseworthy, but humans are, by our nature, worthy of a special level of respect fundamentally above that of animals and beyond that of the most intelligent computers.
We will have dignity if there are no graft and corruption, violence, terrorism, kidnapping and drug trafficking. No torture or other forms of abuse. Dignity calls for empowerment and access to resources, enjoyment of the right to quality education, enforcement of the law for justice to prevail, implementation of economic reforms beneficial to all, protection of the environment, and inculcation of the values of work, study and prayer. It’s a long wish list, but we deserve nothing less.
The leadership we crave for must be capable of distributing love and attention to the poor. It can be preferential but not exclusive. No exploitation of the weak, no ghettos of poverty. Both government and the citizenry must learn to live in authentic liberty, acting in accordance with the rule of law and the respect for human dignity.
Our elected leaders can take a cue from the leadership vision espoused by management experts and authors James Despain, Jane Bodman and Ken Blanchard. It’s called values-based leadership. It depends almost entirely on what a given leader believes. His or her leadership behavior will be largely determined by certain values – greed, arrogance, and contempt for others; or generosity, humility, and respect for others. Changes in our country are possible through value-based motivation. It empowers people to make the right choices. It brings forth satisfaction of the constituency, mutual respect, sense of urgency, teamwork and risk taking.
Values-based leadership for change, as Despain and Bodman explain, "calls for consensus management, collaborative commitment to the identified values, and sustenance of the shared commitment over an extended period of time especially when there are serious problems to be solved." Our country’s experience with culture and social change will convince us that the single biggest barrier in effecting change is what Jim O’Toole characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." We become complacent, passive and without direction. Values-based leadership debunks these behavior patterns, as it focuses on people, unlocking greatness in every individual and thus ensuring dignity for all.
We cannot live a healthy life in an unhealthy society for long. We must resuscitate our sick country back to health. It should start from a leadership that will consciously restore the dignity every Filipino is worthy of.
Based on AGB Philippines’ monitoring, total political ad expenditure in the last 11 weeks have amounted to P850 million or approximately 9 percent of the estimated worth of TV commercials spend at P9 billion in the same period. These reported costs are based on rate cards. Political ads are computed based on 2003 rate cards, which are further reduced by 30 percent.
The adspend figure does not include the last two weeks of the allowable period to advertise where we saw an avalanche of new ads – negative or otherwise –coming mainly from the political parties of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and opposition candidate Fernando Poe Jr. Not to mention the sudden surge of the ad sell for the senatoriables, who at the start of the campaign period underestimated the power of media-based communications. The surveys show that those who advertised way ahead of every other else, had a head start in the senatorial ranking.
As of May 6, the Top 10 TV programs with the most number of political ads included TV Patrol (617), Eat Bulaga (528), 24 Oras (424), Hit Clip (375), MTB Ang Saya Saya (211), Magandang Umaga Bayan (194), Te Amo Maging Sino Kaman (172), Saksi (171), Extra Challenge (161), Unang Hirit (150), and Insider (144).
According to her, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Nokia have co-developed a technology which enables the consumers to print directly all their photos, contact list, calendar, pictures (MMS) and texts (SMS) via bluetooth. We see here a niche where people would want to create an output from their Nokia phones. "That’s how the world has changed. Now, even the printers that HP produces are different. They don’t just connect to personal computers anymore. Some can stand alone. Others come with their own mini LCD monitor where we can view the memory cards directly. Others can print, scan and copy at the same time, while still others can connect to mobile phones via infrared or bluetooth," Co explains. With this innovation, it’s hypertasking time!