Fitting shoes for a president

The world’s biggest pair of shoes is finally acknowledged to be Philippine- made. In undertaking this feat, Filipinos made a most dramatic and extremely timely statement. They gave the rest of the world notice that a nation who makes such shoes must also have the people who can legitimately wear them.

That is a firm announcement that henceforth national leaders whose main talent is bonsai-ing anything they touch must go. Paranoid pygmies, malevolent dwarfs, even good-natured but insistently pandering, please-everyone hobbits are no longer welcome to take the helm of Filipinas, a most-beleaguered ship of state in the world’s currently tempestuous seas. Instead of this inept coterie of feckless freaks, Filipinos now demand skillful governors – literally helmsmen – able to discern and navigate the ever-treacherous waters, sight the most distant horizons for their hidden harbors and, transcending even hawklike sight, envision human sanctuaries where both tranquility and productivity await the ship’s much-battered passengers. In probe after probe of the principal traits their national leaders must now have, Filipinos nationwide rate marunong magpatakbo ng pamahalaan ahead of others. (May malasakit sa mahirap, madaling lapitan and matulungin come close but do not displace capability in running a government as the nation’s most preferred leadership trait nowadays.)

Filipinos appear to be fed up with authorities lacking a sense of direction in governance and willy-nilly drift with whatever current is strongest at the moment. They question foreign policy mindsets that are uncritically supportive of superpower interests that needlessly involve the Philippines in international conflict. Unlike their leaders, most Filipinos would prefer a policy of neutrality in Mideastern political issues and, should that be impossible, closer collaboration with the United Nations rather than the United States or other national parties in managing conflict resolution in that region. Many of the more mature democracies’ leaderships, it may be noted, reflects the prudential preference of Filipinos for the United Nations and multilateral, UN-action on this volatile international concern.

Filipinos are frustrated by leaders who cannot or refuse to take willful initiatives in confronting serious concerns like runaway population growth, lethargic economic productivity, unabated graft and corruption, deepening social injustice, intensifying criminality and a general breakdown of law enforcement nationwide. After almost two years of the current administration, Filipinos seem ready to be more demanding of clear, willful and sustained action on these governance matters.

Leaders who have not made a dent in these areas of urgent national concerns no longer enjoy the approval nor the trust of most Filipinos. They appear to have exhausted the citizenry’s goodwill and their frantic attempts to project more positive images of their administration have met with much public cynicism and, at times, outright derision. Too many PR images, many clashing with others and often superseding each other too rapidly to take a firm hold in the public mind, result in people being confused and ultimately unable to believe in any of the flashed images. (Punch drunk or desperate, or both – to borrow the phrase of a fellow columnist – those who claim to be professionals in this business of public relations have done a poor job in projecting the national administration and its principal, the president. Of course, every craft has its limitations and to those in the realm of public relations, objective realities – the truth, Machiavelli’s la cosa effetuale – could be a most merciless constraint.)

Filipinos have definitely patterned, cut out, hammered, glued and sewed into being the world’s largest pair of shoes. They are now in an even more serious undertaking – doing the same for their public officials and searching for people who deserve to try on and actually wear their nation’s most formidable footwear. Between now and May 2004, if not sooner, Filipinos will have to be found who will be worthy of their shoes as functional governors of the republic.

Obviously, the most dramatic fitting will have to be when a president gets to really try on the nation’s presidential shoes. Most Philippine presidents do not appear to have done so well on this kind of test where neither charisma nor intellectual pretensions count for much.

The shoes either fit or they don’t. That must be the nation’s singular consideration and it must not take even two years to find out. Properly-shoed helmsmen do not slip as they pilot their ship. Presidents who fit properly presidential shoes do not slip much either and will not resort to management by illusion even in the few cases that they do.