MANILA, Philippines - She almost wept, admitted this new University of the Philippines graduate who aspires to be a “tycoon for the people” a la John Gokongwei. So, what upset “AB”? (I don’t have leave to use her name. Sorry.)

“AB” read “Piranha frenzy.” This Viewpoint column (1/17/08) compared the government’s penny-pinching with how other ASEAN countries invest in the future through their kids’ schooling. For education, Malaysia allocates 8.0 percent of a gross domestic product that’s 3.9 times larger than ours. We set aside less than half: 3.2 percent. Thailand spends 4.2 percent. Congressional pork, in contrast, “implodes” along with rhetoric by the undeclared 2010 candidates.

We know these gaps, “AB” emailed. Still, “I felt like crying when I read the latest figures… I felt compelled to comment because we repeatedly quote Jose Rizal: “Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan.” [“Youth is the hope of the Fatherland.”]

She continued: “My parents worked hard to have me finish preschool to high school in a private, all-girls school in Pasig. I was blessed to get into UP [University of the Philippines] at Los Baños,” graduating with a bachelor’s degree last year.

“As early as grade school, I knew what a privilege it was to have the education that I enjoyed. My middle-class parents never failed to remind me of this. So did teachers and nuns in our school.

“And I’ve wanted to give back to my country from this gift. I aspired to be like John Gokongwei: be a tycoon, then build a foundation [that’d help people]. I wanted to teach, especially in the public school system.

“Seven months after graduation, I am still not on my way to becoming what I dreamed about: a ‘tycoon for the people.’ Neither am I teaching. I got into public relations. Because I help my parents pay the bills, I put those dreams in the back seat, at least for now.

“I like my job, but feel like I’m not doing anything big for the country. Would I be feeling so guilty if I hadn’t those noble thoughts first?

“Don’t forget the dreams you have, our teachers reminded us. That’s my prayer. Because that can happen. Reality and cynicism get you. You settle for less. I pray to remember that I want to teach, be an entrepreneur to open jobs, and help. And articles like ‘Piranha frenzy’ are a reminder.

“I forwarded ‘Frenzy’ to all my Internet groups, in case they’re not reading the papers. Knowing what’s happening to our country, and remaining unmoved, means one has a ‘heart problem.’”

Nothing wrong with your heart, kid, I e-mailed back. Your letter is rooted in “values that endure even after the sun goes out.” And for those, in the twilight of personal and professional lives, like us, it’s no little comfort to meet youngsters, who “step back and take the long view.”

We’re worn to a frazzle by the country’s daunting problems. They interlock from neglect accumulated over the decades. But capacity to sort them out is eroded by today’s clutch of self-seeking officials. Most work by the standard that the other is a bigger crook. “Babati-bati, bukas ang labi,” the old Filipino proverb says. He criticizes but is hare-lipped.

In August 2005, a 14-year-old Baguio City high school student emailed: “I’m disturbed. The quality of our leaders is deplorable… Elections are systematized bribery. I’m tempted to migrate but don’t want to. Is there hope for me?”

That anguished question is reflected in today’s acerbic wisecrack, bouncing on the Net. “Define erectile dysfunction,” the professor asks. Answer: “The inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth for the 2010 elections.”

Weren’t these shoddy wannabes also young once? The “fire in the belly” to reach the weak, in an “AB” or our Baguio high school student, must have burned not so long ago in movie actor Joseph Estrada, cadet Panfilo Lacson, broadcaster Noli de Castro and their coterie. Now, we’re saddled with a pardoned plunderer who insists he is not “Jose Velarde.” Senator Lacson struggles to jettison his stained inheritance from the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. Embedded in the constitutional chain of succession, Vice President De Castro itches to preside over necrological rites for the comatose Arroyo presidency. Beyond that what? “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?/ Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

“Our ‘leaders’ don’t just pillage the treasury,” a Cebu Daily News editorial snapped. “They plunder the country of hope. Worse, they seal off the future to the young. Is there a price tag for looting of the spirit?”

These are not “men on white chargers” we also seek. But there are thousands of self-effacing idealists like “AB” who, in day to day work, reach out for those who falter and stumble. Remember Ensign Phillip Pestaño? He who refused to allow illegal logs and “shabu” on his ship. Or Oblate priest Jesus Reynaldo Roda who taught in dirt-poor Tawi-Tawi despite the danger. Don’t they give as much as, probably more than, tycoons?

Don’t fret for not having become “a tycoon for the people” seven months after graduation, we e-mailed. Learn instead what my generation never fully grasped what El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote, just before his assassination in March 1980:

“We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of God’s work. Nothing we do is complete. We simply plant the seeds that one day will grow. We cannot do everything. But this enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete. But it is an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We are workers, not master builders, servant-leaders, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com.