Magsaysay book says Philippines still waiting for visionary leader

MANILA, Philippines - A new book on the “Man of the Masses,” the late President Ramon Magsaysay, will be launched on Aug. 31, his 105th birth anniversary, at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

The launch will be made during ceremonies honoring this year’s recipients of the award named after him. Six outstanding individuals will receive the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for “greatness of spirit” in service to the peoples of Asia.

The book, Ramon Magsaysay: “Servant Leader” with a Vision of Hope, by Dr. Jose Veloso Abueva, former University of the Philippines president and now professor emeritus of political science and public administration, is an updated version of the author’s 1971 Ramon Magsaysay: A Political Biography.

It will be available in mid-September from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF).

Abueva says that, 55 years after the death of the late president in a plane crash, he was able to reflect on the life and presidency of the beloved leader “with the advantage of hindsight and the perspective of half a century of our experience in nation-building and political development.”

Through the book, Abueva expresses his “hope for a democracy that truly serves the people, especially the common people; and building a government of, for, and by all the people.” He says the extended assessment, “Overview: Magsaysay’s ‘Servant Leadership’ and Its Relevance to Nation-Building and Democratic Reform,” compares Magsaysay’s leadership with those who succeeded him up to President Benigno Aquino III.

The author concludes that, more than five decades after Magsaysay’s untimely demise, the country is still waiting for visionary and transformative leaders who will “institutionalize and make sustainable his (Magsaysay’s) vision of hope for a working democracy and a better life for all, and especially the common people.”

Explaining the title of his book, Abueva says Magsaysay exemplified the human model of “servant leadership” because of the president’s values, aims, and methods. He says, like Jesus Christ, a servant leader leads by example, by action, by the quality of his life and possesses qualities like “godliness, integrity, stability, humility, diplomacy, decisiveness, vision, sociability, perceptiveness, and natural common sense.”

The success of a “servant leader,” Abueva adds, is measured by the number of people he reaches and serves.

Abueva, founder of the innovative Kalayaan College, a cooperative-like academic institution with UP educators as stockholders that offer “UP quality education” to students who cannot enter the state university because of set quotas, is a political activist and reformer who believes the country needs a federal and parliamentary form of government.

The political scientist says the Philippines remains dominated by oligarchies that perpetuate family dynasties and is paralyzed by “dysfunctional institutions of presidential government and our highly centralized unitary system.”

He thinks the political reforms Magsaysay sought to make the government better serve the people and empower citizens can be achieved through federalism, which gives autonomy to local governments, and a parliamentary system.

He has organized young Filipino professionals into a centrist democratic party, Ang Partido ng Tunay na Demokrasya, to “begin to reform political parties dominated by oligarchs and family dynasties.” A member of the governing council of the International Center for Global Nonkilling, Abueva led the founding of the Movement for a Nonkilling Philippines to help bring down killings and rebellion here.