Celebrating Jesse

Rightly so, we mourn Jesse Robredo. I worry, though, that we are going overboard with the maudlin aspects and then, a few days after we bury him, we forget the man, his principles, and what he stood and stands for.

The mourning for Jesse reminds me of the outpouring of sorrow for another Bicolano, Raul Roco. Filipino-style, amid the grief we joked that he was the best president we never had. But this “best president” quip was used as well for Fernando Poe Jr., and, sometimes, for Ninoy Aquino, whose death anniversary we just celebrated, his memory juxtaposed now with that of Jesse Robredo.

We mourn, wondering about the cliché “good men die young,” and think of the converse about masasamang damo, weeds, being long-lived. But I prefer that we celebrate Jesse as a sign that the Philippines is coming of age, albeit slowly, when it comes to leader-servants. The term itself is awkward, almost an oxymoron in a feudal society like the Philippines, but that was what Jesse was, someone who saw governance as a matter of public service.

Long before transformative leadership became a catchword, he showed that leader-servants transform people’s lives, and societies, sustained by the public trust that is accumulated. I see it in friends from Naga City, who speak with pride of their city. There is a sense of ownership in what has been achieved, and a commitment to sustaining those achievements.

No-nonsense leaders

Jesse was born in 1958 and so missed the radicalism of the early 1970s, as well as martial law. His college training was mainstream, very “Establishment”: undergraduate degrees in industrial management engineering and mechanical engineering at De La Salle University, an MBA (master’s degree in business administration) from the University of the Philippines Diliman.

With those degrees he could have easily carved out a niche in the private sector. He did work for San Miguel Corp. right after college, but returned to his hometown Naga to work for the Bicol River Basin Development Program, and ran, successfully, for mayor in 1988. He later finished an MPA (master of public administration) at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Jesse represented a new breed of no-nonsense government leaders who learned from business administration and management. What’s striking, though, is that the Philippines has been trying to do this for several decades now. The Development Academy of the Philippines was established for this purpose, and hundreds of government personnel and leaders have gone through its seminars and courses. UP has its National College of Public Administration and Governance, which has also trained hundreds of government personnel. Other government administrators have gone to private universities like Ateneo de Manila’s School of Government, or abroad, as with Harvard, for training.

So, as we celebrate people like Jesse, we need to ask as well, what made the difference, considering that these exemplars remain a tiny minority from among the many who have studied public administration?

Might it have been the Jesuit training with its emphasis on being a man for others, Jesse having studied at Ateneo de Naga? Or was it his college days at La Salle? Or UP Diliman? Or Harvard? Or, as we go in multiple choice exams, all of the above, none of the above?

Seriously, we need to “study” the transformative leaders around, to find out why they are so different. What were the life-transforming people, and events, in their own lives, and how did they, if I might use a religious metaphor, keep the faith? We’ve seen how difficult the challenges are for good transformative leaders. Former Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca is an example: She is currently a victim of political vendetta because she was too honest, too upright when she was governor.

Golden age?

We look at these leaders, and how they keep going. I am certain we’ll find a mix of family, school and work influences that has shaped them, but I also want to think that the Philippines, as a nation, is being transformed, too. Contrary to popular perceptions, I doubt very much that we once had a golden age where government bureaucrats were all clean and honest. Historical records show that clearly: The Spanish colonial period was corrupt to the core, from governor-generals to the Guardia Civil, from the Spanish friars to the local leaders.

We tend to romanticize the American colonial period as one of clean politics. The historical reality is that the Americans tutored us not just on formal democratic processes but also in wheeling and dealing and transactional politics. We forget that government corruption was so widespread in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries it would make most of our present crop of corrupt Filipino politicians look like pickpockets, and that there were colonial administrators who became wealthy here in the Philippines, using their political positions to carve out lucrative businesses.

Jesse and other leaders like him give us hope, and should inspire future generations of leaders. Perhaps the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF), which honored him in 2000 for government service, can sponsor a study on his and others’ transformative leadership. I know there are biographies out on some of the Ramon Magsaysay awardees, but it is time we looked at how people like Jesse affected people, and their notions of citizenship. That would include his wife, Leni Robredo, who has resisted calls to create another political dynasty. (There are times, though, when we need to better define political dynasties. There are capable men and women who can, and should, run on their own merit, even if they are related to previous leaders.)

I want to end by pointing out, too, that local Chinese papers have also been covering the news of the plane crash and eulogizing Jesse using his Chinese name, pronounced Lin Bingzhi in Mandarin. Jesse’s paternal grandfather was a Chinese immigrant, Lim Pay Co, who later changed his name to Juan Lim Robredo.

For ethnic Chinese in the Philippines, Jesse should be a role model for breaking the mold of traditional politics, which local Chinese have sometimes been guilty of propagating. Just as Jesse transcended being Bicolano, we ethnic Chinese need as well to place the Philippines, and being Filipino, first.

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RMAF Lecture Series: This year’s RMAF awardees—

Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto of Indonesia, Syeda Rizwana Hasan of Bangladesh, Yang Saing Koma of Cambodia, Kulandei Francis of India, Chen Shu-chu of Taiwan and our own

Romulo Davide—will be lecturing about their work from Aug. 28 to 30. Check the website rmaf.org.ph or e-mail rmaf@rmaf.org.ph for more information.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph