‘New Breed of Leaders’
by Antonio C. Abaya
Written May 09, 2006

For the Standard Today,
May 11 issue


It was Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, current president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines who said in a lecture, said to be posted in his blogsite, that “Filipinos should combine their efforts and come up with ‘a new breed of leaders in our country.’” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 06, 2006).

Archbishop Lagdameo is talking sense, more sense than most Church leaders, past or present. But because he does not have the personal charisma of Cardinal Sin, his statement is buried in an inside page, instead of on the front page, and the Insider does not even give his blogsite for readers who want to read his lecture in full. And no one else in media seems to have picked it up. A pity.

Let me excerpt the Inquirer story (by Christian V. Esguerra) liberally for those who may have missed it:

The problem, said Archbishop Lagdameo, is a concatenation of corruption that goes down to the barangay level, up and down and up, infecting the whole body politic like a contagious cancer.”

“It deprives the poor of permanent shelter, health benefits, dignified employment and above all, sufficient food,” he said.

To cure what he called a “social cancer”, Filipinos should combine their efforts and come up with “a new breed of leaders in our country.”

Lagdameo was trying to rally the country behind a “new social order” in an apparent response to the seeming void created by the arrival and departure of politicians, all of whom appeared to be enslaved by traditional politics.

This vision was contained in a “national roadmap” focused on “sowing the seeds of hope through moral values.”

The strategy was consistent with the January CBCP pastoral letter that pointed to a crisis of moral values as the center of the problem in Philippine society today.

Lagdameo said such a crisis seriously affected the poor who were “oftentimes exploited and treated like commodities.”

“Graft and corruption have been flagrant and endemic, breeding poverty. Widespread poverty in turn breeds graft and corruption,” he said.

Lagdameo said the roadmap asks all “drivers of change – meaning family, school, business enterprises, government units and all other sectors of society – what they could do for the common good of the national community.

“In trying to answer this question, [the roadmap] strongly suggests that whatever answer we give must be fully consistent with the vision and mission we should have for our country and the core values that should underlie all aspects of our national life,” he said.

A crucial first step would be to gather a “critical mass of like-minded and good-willed nationalists with a passion and obsession for good governance and prophetic leadership” from which a “new breed of statespersons” would be born, Lagdameo said.

“This critical mass will be the training ground of other nationalists who will lead our country with the values of honesty and justice, truth and integrity, credibility and accountability, transparency and stewardship,” he said.

End of excerpts from the Inquirer.

Lagdameo’s call for “a new breed of leaders” is significant because, as president of the CBCP, he has the organizational reach and the moral clout to make it happen, if he chooses to make it happen.

An examination of our political culture and the media environment in which it festers shows an incestuous relationship between the two. With very few exceptions, Philippine media give publicity and importance largely only to three groups – the trapos (both administration and opposition), the coup-plotters and the communists.

Those who do not belong to any of these three categories are marginalized, sometimes given some publicity, but more often than not, ignored. And thus they are not factored into the political equation. They have no political weight, they do not have the resources or the temperament or the inclination to plot coups against anyone, and they do not know how to make the shrill, theatrical noises of the communists that the complicit Philippine media love to give front page column inches and TV sound bytes to.

During the brouhaha attendant to the EDSA anniversary last February, these three groups – opposition trapos, coup-plotters and communists – apparently coalesced in yet another attempt to overthrow President Arroyo, and again failed. Failed mainly because the middle class, again, declined to join, even though many, even most, of them, do not have any love for Gloria Arroyo.

It should be clear to everyone by now that the middle class dislike the opposition trapos, the mercenary coup-plotters and the tiresome communists, with equal measure. It is to this uncommitted middle class that Lagdamao and the CBCP should address their call for a “new breed of leaders”, because it may be from their ranks that this new breed of leaders may emerge.

The Church has its own media outlets, it has its network of schools and parishes, that can provide the initial fora in which potential new leaders can articulate their positions, independent of the commercial media which are not hospitable to them.

These fora, provided for and organized by the CBCP, could prove to be more effective venues for principled opposition (as distinguished from opportunistic opposition), than those raucous street rallies favored by the opposition trapos and the tiresome communists, which merely tie up traffic and disrupt business activities, and generate only confrontational heat rather than liberating light.

But to be effective, the CBCP fora should be ecumenical, open not only to Catholics but also to Protestants, Born Agains, Muslims, Iglesias, Aglipays, even to agnostics, atheists and secular humanists. The defining character of the fora should be: non-trapo, non-coup-ric, and non-communist.. Only then may the uncommitted middle class possibly and finally commit themselves.