Three men and a lady

It’s election season again, not for most of us but for a lot of those who make a dent in our lives.

Only a fraction of the population count themselves members of the P2.75-million-a-share Manila Polo Club in Forbes Park, Makati City. But this fraction of the population probably includes your boss, your sister’s boss and your best friend’s most valuable client.

The movers and shakers of business and industry have espresso at the Polo Club’s Willow Root, while society’s darlings like to relax with a tall glass of iced tea at the Sports Lounge. As palangga Maurice Arcache would say, most of them would be "namedroppables."

The next Polo Club elections, slated for Sept. 25, aren’t going to be just a social event. In the weeks leading to the club’s polls, the team that is challenging the club’s present leadership has been raising issues that normally also surface during election time in the Philippine political arena.

The Polo Club is a republic of its own and so Roman Azanza Jr., Isabel Caro Wilson, Jose Cuisia Jr., Roberto Romulo and Jesus Tambunting–all running under the "Good Governance" team–want it run like a good government.

Oh, my, is there such a thing?

* * *

Except for Azanza, all four members of the Good Governance team have served government in recent history. Bobby Romulo is President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s adviser on international competitiveness. He was foreign secretary during the administration of President Fidel Ramos.

Joey Cuisia was Central Bank governor during the term of President Corazon Aquino. For his part, Chuching Tambunting served as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1993 to 1998. Isabel Caro Wilson, a stalwart of NAMFREL during the snap presidential polls, was ambassador to Spain from 1993 to 1998.

They are running on a platform of "transparency, accountability, consultation on urgent issues, and civility and cooperation among members."

The STAR met with the four candidates on Sept. 11 at the Tower Club at the 33rd floor of the Philamlife Tower in Makati. Before we listened to their plans–which all four felt were part of their civic duty–we asked them how they felt to be in a tower on Sept. 11.

They all laughed, with their laughter easily dissolving into serious talk. They are truly running for their lives–believing as they do that the Polo Club is a big part of their lives and those of their children.

"Why are we doing this?" Cuisia begins. "Well, it’s not for us. We’ve been asked to form a team because a lot of members feel there’s need for change. And we’re doing this for the greater good of the majority. We’re here to serve. It’s for the sake of the majority of the members. And of course, we want to make sure that in the future, our children, our grandchildren, will have a club to enjoy."

"If we can’t even instill good governance in a club, then we’ve failed miserably. Because if we can’t do it in the club, which counts as its members the leaders of the Philippines in many ways, how are we going to change the Philippines and practice good governance?" says the son of the late Gen. Carlos P. Romulo.

The only lady in the group agrees. "As a follow up to that," says Wilson, currently the chairman of Business Machines Corp. and the president of the Dasmariñas Village Association, "what’s happening at the Polo Club is a microcosm of what’s happening in the country."

Tambunting, currently the chairman and CEO of Planters Development Bank, says serving the Polo is his "own little way of doing the right thing. And this is a good way to start, in our own little club. We owe it to our country, our children and ourselves."

* * *

Romulo, Cuisia, Tambunting and Wilson (actually their names strung together would look good on the stationery of a law firm) were distressed when employees of the club went on a picket last Easter. Allegedly invoking tight money, the Club had fired these employees.

"On seeing the picket, I asked some questions and asked for answers and nobody gave them to me. So I wrote a letter saying, ‘We are supposed to be the models of industrial relations, it would seem, based on what I know, that we do not even respect the dignity of these individuals who have taken care of our children!’ The Polo Club employees treated my children very well. So they deserve more than just a handout of money. They should have been treated with dignity."

* * *

At the end of the day, the elections at the Polo Club will really be just the business of its members, 30 percent of whom are foreign. But the candidates and the club’s members will be watched because they are no ordinary people. Much has been said of elections in the Philippines, where people vote for the wrong reasons, where popularity counts more than principle. Much of what has gone wrong in the elections have been blamed on the uneducated masses.

At the Polo Club, you have the antithesis of the so-called uneducated masses. You have the cream of the crop. How Polo Club members will vote, and how they will conduct their elections, will be a sociologist’s dream case study.

Are the rich and the educated wiser voters? Abangan.