Where are the meek and humble leader-servants?

Amid fear and rumors about possible failure of elections, let us assume that elections will proceed and that winners will be proclaimed. As we all know and as we have mentioned again and again, in this country, assuming that the real winners will be proclaimed as such is very naïve. Instead, given this country's history of cheating and dishonest elections, it is more common to assume the opposite, that the losers, instead, will be the ones proclaimed as winners.

At the rate the candidates and political parties are behaving, however, it is becoming clearer that whoever may be proclaimed as winners, the Filipino people will end up, as always, as the biggest losers.

Theoretically, elections should reflect the people's choice. And the people's choice should reflect the people's will. Theoretically, the winds of change and hope are ushered in by the choices of the people duly elected and proclaimed.

Sadly, what we are witnessing now discourages us more and more not to engage in this year's elections or subsequent elections, unless and until we see sincere candidates who recognize that they are the servants, not the lords or the masters of our people and this country.

Even before elections, political parties and candidates are throwing more trash and garbage at each other. Already, our country's garbage is mountain-high, politics is adding even more toxic waste during this campaign period.

The political trash created by the candidates and parties is insulting to our people, who deserve to have elections and the campaign period as useful processes and venues for much-needed cleansing and upliftment of our people and our nation.

Tama na, sobra na, palitan na ang mga basura at trapo among politicians, candidates, and political parties! Our people and this country deserve leaders who have clean hearts who, together with the people, will usher in a new era of honesty, sincere, and effective administration, a morally-ascendant nation!

What we are seeing instead are parties and candidates who assume that their victory will give them outright control of our people and our country, that leadership should come from them who are on top and trickle to those below them to those at the bottom, and that they are the only ones who can lead and manage this country.

Where are those candidates and parties humble enough in recognizing that if elected, they are servants, not masters, of our people? Where are those candidates who are open and broadminded enough to acknowledge that once elected, they or their political parties are merely caretakers, stewards of the resources of this country, that the government does not refer only to them but to everyone else in this country?

Now that May is coming close, we still have to see the clean-hearted among the candidates and the political parties. At the rate the present campaign is going, elections or no elections, our people, whose votes translate into power and can install winners, may end up again as the powerless losers.

Where are the meek and humble among the candidates and the political parties? The genuine servant-leaders have yet to show themselves.

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