Cut from the same cloth

My friend STAR colleague Babes Romualdez beat me to it. I have been mulling an article about new leadership in our country. While I agree wholeheartedly on the need to give the reins of running this country to a new generation myself, I would push it further. This new generation of leaders should come from different, multiple pools of genes — from more humble origins and distant provinces and not necessarily from imperial Manila. They should not be cut from the same cloth.

I can never forget what the former Indian ambassador to Manila, Navrekha Sharma (she’s now in Jakarta) once told me excitedly — Indians who win Nobel awards came largely from the provinces and obtained their early schooling from rural schools. Contrary to conventional thinking they did not come from sophisticated urban schools in New Delhi and other educational centers.

It is a phenomenon that deserves more attention. These Indian children fought their way to the top of India’s universities and research centers. This can be true in the Philippines as well. The problem is that in our present system the opportunities for these young men and women are limited. The system nurtures privilege, money and connections as the ordinary routes to leadership. Joey Concepcion, JV Ejercito, Koko Pimentel, Martin Romualdez and of course, the anointed president to be of the Establishment, Mar Roxas may be bright fellas but the country needs exceptional leadership.

He or she will not come from privileged stock. We will never even know of him or her until we give them the chance to blossom. This lonely boy or girl may be working his or her way up, very talented but also very burdened by hardship. It is among these obscure young with the glint of steel, tempered by failure and disappointment that I will place my wager for the future leadership of this country. But we will have to open up the levers of leadership to them, not by donations, scholarships, or any forms of hand-me downs but the opportunity to rise on their own merit.

They will shine when the political and economic fields are opened to more players from different levels of society. We pay lip service to equal opportunity and leveling the playing field to no avail until we restructure our society or we get more of the same. Under the present system money, pedigree and celebrity have an undeserved premium. This we can do with Charter change. A shift to parliamentary federal government broadens and deepens succession. At the start, we may see familiar faces, the Ejercitos, Concepcions, Pimentels and Romualdezes et al but that will not be for long when new players enter to challenge their hegemony.

In parliamentary federal government, the chances for my obscure young boy or girl without money and popularity will rise. The route is to excel within the party and to be judged by his peers on his own merit rather than kowtowing to power brokers. There will be hundreds of contestants from different levels of leadership before they can aspire to be prime minister or party leader. We may see the rise of figures from local authorities honed in understanding constituency politics instead of the Senate’s barkada politics. Let us distribute power to enable more players (including my obscure boy probinsyano) to vie for the leadership of the Filipino nation.

MISCELLANY: This may be a bit late but something had to be said about President GMA walking out from Inquirer interview when the reporters asked "Isn’t it a concern for you, Ma’am, that the billionaires during the time of Marcos and Ramos are also the same billionaires now?" Instead of walking out, I would have asked him the same question: Isn’t he concerned working in a newspaper owned by oligarchs in the Marcos and Ramos governments and continuing under the Arroyo government. Yes, but does the reporter have a choice? Well, he could resign and look for a new job if he cannot stand working with billionaires. Wish him luck. At the very least he should not feign disgust when the thumb is pointing at him.

With a letter to Pope Benedict XVI to hand, Charter change advocates met with the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Fernando Filoni recently. He was former nuncio to Iraq. The group included members of the new political party UNLAD, constitutional expert former UP President Jose Abueva and Sigaw ng Bayan’s Raul Lambino. We had come to ask him generally to help us understand the encyclical Deus Caritas Est. Although he said nothing that can be construed as explicitly taking sides he nevertheless helped us understand the Church’s dilemma.

He asked us to pursue a dialogue with the CBCP until we find a breakthrough. He would consider inviting an expert on canon law. He praised Cardinal Vidal’s wisdom but would not blame bishops who thought otherwise. He knew about Jose Rizal and his heroic deeds and how the Philippines might have had a parliamentary government had Americans not come to mold us in their image. We learned many things from him in the two hour conversation. We came away with more than just an understanding of Deus Caritas Est.

Abroad, Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator after a meeting with IAEA’s ElBaradei told a press conference his country’s nuclear program is peaceful, and it is willing to offer the West guarantees that Iran will not seek atomic weapons." The statement came with ElBaradei poised to report to the UN Security Council on whether Iran has met UN demands to halt uranium enrichment by 21 February. "We have no objections to settling these concerns at the negotiating table," Larijani said.

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